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SCALE OF MILES 



SO SO 100 150 200 

Eastern United States 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

THROUGH 
THE APPALACHIANS 



BY 



ALBERT PERRY BRIGHAM, A.M. 

Pkofessok of Geology in CoLciAXE University 
Author of "Geographic Influences in American History 



GINN & COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 



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UBBARY of CONGRESS 
Two Oeo^ ReceJved 

FFH 26 590/ 

A Copyright Entry _^ 
SIaSS a XXI., n«, 
copr B./ 



Copyright, 1907, by 
ALBERT PERRY BRIGHAM 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



77-2 



^l)t atfjenatum Dress 

GINN & COMPANY- PRO- 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

This book grows out of the conviction that geography 
in the schools must return somewhat to human interests. 
In saying this the author will scarcely need to defend 
himself against the charge of undervaluing physiography. 
It is only a question of wise adaptation to youthful stu- 
dents. Elementary history also needs to be placed in its 
setting of physical conditions. It is here attempted to 
promote both these objects in the study of the eastern 
United States. If geography and history can be well cor- 
related, both of these great themes may be taught with 
economy of time and with stronger interest. 

Much more might be said concerning the growth of 
centers, the agriculture, and the commerce, but the limits 
of space are rigid. Hence roads and westward move- 
ments have been made the main topic. The geography 
is not taught formally, but is woven in with the story. 
Care has been given to the maps of the several regions, 
that they should clearly express the essentials and avoid 
the vagueness of many small-scale representations of the 

Appalachian belt. 

A. P. B. 

Colgate University 

October, 1906 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I. Boston and the Berkshires i 

II. Pioneers of the Mohawk and the Hudson . 14 

III. Oriskany, a Battle of the Revolution . . 29 

IV. The Erie Canal 40 

V. The New York Central Railway 53 

VI. Old Journeys from Philadelphia to the West 63 

\^II. The Pennsylvania Railroad 74 

VIII. The National Road 86 

IX. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad .... 98 

X. Cities of the Ohio Valley in 

XI. The Great Valley 129 

XII. To Kentucky by the Cumberland Gap . . . 142 

XIII. Frontier Soldiers and Statesmen .... 155 

XIV. Cities of the Southern Mountains .... 167 

INDEX 183 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Figure Page 

1. Cunaid Steamship . 3 

2. Union Station, Springfield 6 

3. Deerfield Valley, Charlemont, Mass 8 

4. Eastern Portal of Hoosac Tunnel 11 

5. South Station, Boston 12 

6. Henry Hudson 16 

7. Sir William Johnson 20 

8. Genesee Street, Utica 23 

9. Old Fort Johnson, Amsterdam, New York 26 

10. Oriskany Battle Monument 30 

11. Herkimer directing the Battle of Oriskany ^^ 

12. Herkimer's Monument and Mansion 36 

13. De Witt Clinton 43 

14. Erie Canal, Utica 46 

1 5. Erie Canal, Syracuse 48 

16. Traveling by Packet on the Erie Canal ........ 50 

17. Erie Canal and Solvay Works, Syracuse 51 

18. De Witt Clinton Train 54 

19. Twentieth Century Limited 57 

20. Rounding the Noses, Mohawk Valley 59 

21. Penn Square, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 65 

22. Bridge over Conestoga Creek, Lancaster, Pennsylvania ... 67 

23. Tollhouse near Lancaster, Pennsylvania 68 

24. Hambright's Hotel, on the " l^ancaster Pike " 70 

25. Old Road House, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania 71 

26. Freight Locomotive, Pennsylvania Railroad 75 

27. Tunnel, Portage Railway 76 

28. Broad Street Station, Philadelphia 77 

29. Bridge, Pennsylvania Railroad, above Harrisburg 79 

30. Pennsylvania Railroad Shops, Altoona So 

31. Horseshoe Curve, Pennsylvania Railroad 81 

32. Rock Cut, PeniLsylvania Railroad 84 

22- Tollhouse near Brownsville, Pennsylvania 87 

34. Milestone, Braddock's Road, Frostburg, Maryland .... 90 

35. Old Road House, Brownsville, Pennsylvania 92 

36. Cumberland and Gap in Wills Mountain 95 

^y. Bridge and Monument, National Road, near Wheeling, West 

Virginia 96 

38. Mount Royal Station, Baltimore 99 

vii 



viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FiGi'KE Page 

39. Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, Cuniberhind 100 

40. Highest Point on Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Sand Patch, 

I^ennsylvania 

41. Down the Potomac from Harpers Ferry 

42. Coke Ovens, Meyersdale, Pennsylvania 

43. The Observation End, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad . . 

44. Old Blockhouse, Pittsburg 

45. Pittsburg 

46. Coal Barges, Pittsburg 

47. Pittsburg at Night 

48. Furnaces near Pittsburg 

49. River Front, Cincinnati 

50. Luray, Shenandoah Valley 

51. James River Gap in the Blue Ridge 

52. Hilly Farm Lands, near Rnoxville 

53. (ireat Valley, from the Pinnacle, Cumberland (iap . . . 

54. Cumberland Gap from the East 

55. Daniel Boone 

56. Pineville Gap, Cumberland River 

57. Cornfield near Cumberland Gap 

58. Kentucky Blue Grass 

59. Three States Monument, Cumberland Gap 

60. George Rogers Clark 

61. On the Freiicli Broad 

62. John Sevier 

63. James Robertson 

64. Sevier Monument, Knoxville 

65. Old Statehouse, Knoxville 

66. Street in Knoxville 

67. On the Campus, University of Tennessee 

68. Marble Quarry near Knoxville 

69. Statehouse, Nashville 

70. Chattanooga from Cameron Hill 

71. Broad Street, Atlanta 

72. Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills, Atlanta 

73. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta 

74. Iron Furnace, Birmingham 

MAPS 

Eastern United States Frontispiece 

New England Facing page 4 

New York " " 26 

Pennsylvania " " 64 

Southern Appalachian Region " " 132 



03 
06 
oS 
10 
12 

15 
19 

20 
21 

25 
31 
34 
36 
39 
43 
45 
47 
50 

y- 
53 

57 

59 
62 

64 

65 

66 
68 
69 

71 
73 
75 
77 
7« 

79 
So 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



2 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

that Governor Hancock and the people said fine things 
and made merry. 

This Uttle ship was eighty-three feet long, and you 
could measure off seven or eight times her length on one 
of the big liners of to-day. Later the same ship set sail 
again, and on the west coast of America, in one of the 
roughest seas, her master. Captain Gray, saw the mouth 
of a great river. He was determined to enter it. Hav- 
ing crossed the breakers, he sailed up the river more 
than twenty miles, and to-day it bears the name of his 
ship, the Columbia. Boston was reaching out into the 
wide world. Many years later this discovery had much 
to do with securing the rights of the United States in 
the Oregon country against the claims of Great Britain. 

Young lads often went out on these voyages, and the 
training made them strong men. There were dangers 
on the ocean then which to-day we do not fear, for 
pirates still lay in wait for merchantmen and foreign 
powers took liberties with American ships. One vessel 
seen in Boston harbor was named CatcJi-me-if-you-caii. 

Many years later, when Mr. Samuel Cunard of Halifax 
took a contract to carry the royal mail between Liverpool 
and America, there was an immediate protest from the 
Boston merchants against ending the voyage at Halifax. 
They urged the great commercial advantage of having 
the ships run westward to Boston after stopping at Hali- 
fax, and so powerful were these arguments that the first 
Cunard liners came steaming into Massachusetts bay. 

This was not pleasant for New York people, who 
tried to show that theirs was the better port. As if to 
help in the fight against Boston, the harbor froze over 




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4 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

in the winter of 1844, ^^^ the Cunard ship, the Britan- 
nia, could not sail. Determined to hold their own, the 
Boston people engaged Frederick Tudor, a great ex- 
porter of ice, to bring his machinery from the fresh- 
water ponds and cut a way. He soon made a lane of 
open water, and the Britannia sailed out for Liverpool. 

While ocean trade was growing much had been done 
on the land. Settlements were first made at Plymouth, 
Salem, and Boston, and as soon as possible the rough 
forest trails joining these towns were changed into 
roads. Many ferries and bridges were needed to cross 
the streams, and roads were carried back into the 
country as the people settled farther from the sea. 

After Providence was begun, in the Narragansett 
country, and the rich lands along the Connecticut were 
settled, there was need of roads across the hills of Mas- 
sachusetts, so that the colonists could visit each other, 
exchange letters, and thus be less exposed to danger 
from savages in the great American wilderness. 

The highway leading along the east coast was called 
Bay Road. A post rider went between Boston and 
New York in 1704, and a rough path he had to travel. 
It was thought remarkable, four years later, that a 
woman. Madam Sarah Knights, made that journey. 
She afterwards taught school in Boston, and Benjamin 
Franklin was one of her pupils. Somebody scratched 
these lines on a window pane in her schoolroom : 

Through many toils and many frights 
I have returned, poor Sarah Knights ; 
Over great rocks and many stones, 
God has preserved from fractured bones. 




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SCALE OF MILES 

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Boston and Maine Railroad (Fitchburg Division) 
Boston and Albany Railroad 



BOSTON AND TllK BERKSHIRKS 



5 



There is no doubt about the " great rocks and many 
stones " of New England, but around Boston, at any 
rate, one usually sees them now at a safe distance. 

In western Massachusetts is the great Berkshire 
country. Through most of its length the Housatonic 
river runs to the southward. At the north the Hoosick 
river flows from it, across a corner of Vermont, to the 
Hudson. On the first is beautiful Pittsfield, and on the 
second is busy North Adams with its mills. In sight 
everywhere are the mountains, not very high and usually 
covered with forest, but sometimes bold and rocky. 
Farther north we should call them the Green mountains, 
but here we name them the Berkshires. The eastern 
range, which separates the Housatonic valley on the 
west from the Connecticut valley on the east, is Hoosac 
mountain, of which we shall hear again. 

These long ranges of mountains run from north to 
south, and while it was easy to follow the valleys between 
them, it was hard to go across them from east to west 
or from west to east. Boston and all the chief towns of 
New England lay eastward, and the rest of the country 
was west of the mountains. If a Massachusetts family 
wished to settle in the fertile lands of western New 
York or Ohio, they had to cross the mountains. In our 
day the mountain region is full of towns and beautiful 
summer homes, but then it was a wilderness which in 
places was almost impassable. If it was difficult to 
make a single journey between the Connecticut river 
and the Hudson, it was quite out of the question to 
carry grain and fruit from the West to Boston, and to 
bring back in exchange the goods made in her factories. 



6 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

Near Pittsfield, in the heart of the Berkshires, rises 
the Westfield river, which has cut a deep valley east- 
ward through the mountains. Opposite the place where 
this stream enters the Connecticut the beautiful city of 
Springfield has now grown up, partly on the low grounds 
and partly on a terrace. It is readily seen that the West- 
field valley forms a natural roadway from here westward 




Fig. 2. Union Railway Station, Springfield, Massachusetts 



to Pittsfield, and on toward Albany and the Mohawk in 
New York. We cannot say that the valley was made 
for the cities, but the cities were made, in part at least, 
because the valley was there. 

The first roads that improved on the Indian trails 
were, of course, made for wagons. The gorge of the 
Westfield was so rugged that a hundred years ago it 



BOSTON AND THE BERKSHIRES 7 

seemed almost impossible to make a good wagon road 
through it. There were some people, however, who 
thought that it could be done and who determined to 
do it. Their courage won, and before long there was a 
good highway all along the roaring river. The bowlders 
were rolled out of the way, the trees were cut, the road- 
bed was made, and people could go east and west in the 
stages without risk of losing their lives or even of break- 
ing their bones. This w^as accomplished soon after 1825, 
but it did not solve all the problems of the Massachusetts 
people, for, as we shall soon learn fully, the Erie canal was 
finished in that year, and a long string of canal boats 
began to carry produce from the West to New York. 

The good people of Boston watched all this going on. 
Every load of grain was headed straight eastward as if 
it were coming to Massachusetts bay, thence to go by 
vessel to Europe. But when it reached the Hudson it 
was sure to turn off down that river to help load ships 
at the piers of New York. And New England had only 
a wagon road across the mountains ! A wagon road will 
never draw trade away from a tidal river, and thus we 
can understand why a prominent Massachusetts man, 
Charles Francis Adams, spoke of the Hudson as "a 
river so fatal to Boston." Boston might have all the 
ships she wanted, but if she could not get cargoes for 
them they would be of no use. Shipowners, seeing 
that there was plenty of western freight in New York, 
sent their boats there. It was indeed time that Boston 
people began to ask themselves what they could do. 

They still had ships, but these were usually " down 
East" coasters, and the noble vessels from far eastern 



8 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



ports, laden with spices and teas, silks, and all the spoils 
of Europe and Asia, rarely came to Boston, but brought 
more and greater loads to New York and Baltimore, 
where they could lay in corn and wheat for the return 
voyage. Even the Cunards transferred most of their 
boats and finally all their mail steamers to New York. 

The people of Boston first said, " We will build 
another canal, up the Hoosick and down the Deerfield 
valley, and then the canal boats will keep on to the east." 




Fig. 3. The Valley of Deerfield River at Charlemont, Massa- 
chusetts, o.\ THE Line of the Bostox and Maine Railroad 



As states often do, they appointed a commission to see 
if the canal could be built, and what it would cost. But 
what were they to do about Hoosac mountain, which 
stood a thousand feet high, of solid rock, between the 
Hoosick valley on the west and the Deerfield valley on 
the east ? 



BOSTON AND THE HKKKSUIKES 9 

They decided that they would tunnel it for the water 
way. Rather strangely they thought it could be done 
for a little less than a million dollars. A wise engineer 
made the survey for the canal, and when he remarked, 
"■ It seems as if the finger of IVovidence had pointed 
out this route from the east to the west," some one who 
stood near replied, '' It 's a great pit^- that the same 
finger was n't thrust through the mountain." The plans 
for the canal were finally given up, and though many 
years later such a tunnel was made, it was not for a 
canal, nor was the work done for a million dollars. 

Every one was talking now of railways, but few 
thought that rails could be laid across the Berkshires. 
It was even said in a Boston paper that such a road 
could never be built to Albany ; that it would cost as 
much to do it as all Massachusetts would sell for; and 
that if it should be finished, everybody with common 
sense knew it would be as useless as a railroad from 
Boston to the moon. We need not be too hard on this 
writer, for it was five years later when the De Witt 
Clinton train climbed the hill from Albany and carried 
its handful of passengers to Schenectady. 

One of the friends of the railway scheme was Abner 
Phelps. When he was a senior at Williams College, in 
1806, he had thought of it, for he had heard about 
the tram cars in the English coal regions. In 1826 he 
became a member of the legislature of Massachusetts, 
and the second day he was there he proposed that the 
road should be built. 

In time the project went through, but at first it was 
planned to pull the cars with horses, and on the down 



lO FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

grades to take the horses on the cars and let them ride. 
We do not know how it was intended that the cars 
should be held back, for it was long before the invention 
of air brakes. The line was built to its western end on 
the Hudson in 1842, and thus Boston, Worcester, Spring- 
field, and Albany were bound together by iron rails. 

There was only a single track and the grades were 
heavy. The road brought little trade to Boston, and 
most of the goods from the West still went by way of 
the Hudson to New York. It was, however, a begin- 
ning, and it showed that the mountain wall could be 
crossed. 

The subject of a Hoosac tunnel now came up again. 
It would take a long time to tell how the tunnel was 
made ; indeed, it was a long time in making. It was 
begun in 18 50 or soon afterwards, and the work went 
slowly, with many stops and misfortunes, so that the 
hole through the mountain was not finished until Novem- 
ber 27, 1873. On that day the last blast was set off. 
which made the opening from the east to the west side . 
and the first regular passenger train ran through July 8, 
1875, fifty years after it had been planned to make a 
canal under the mountain. 

In order to help on the work the engineers sunk a 
shaft a thousand feet deep from the top of the mountain 
to the level of the tunnel, and from the bottom worked 
east and west. This gave them four faces, or "headings," 
on which to work, instead of two, and hastened the finish- 
ing. The whole cost was about fourteen million dollars. 

It took great skill to sink the shaft on just the right 
line, and to make the parts of the tunnel exactly meet, 




II 



12 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



as the men worked in from opposite directions. They 
brought the ends together under the mountain with a 
difference of only five sixteenths of an inch ! You can 
measure this on a finger nail and see how much it is. 
The tremendous task was successfully accomplished, 
and Boston was no longer shut off from the rest of the 
country by the mountains. 

' The end of it all is not that Boston has won all the 
ships away from New York, but that gradually she has 




Fig. 5. The South Station, Boston 

been getting her share. Now she has great Cunarders, 
White Star Liners, and the Leyland boats, — all giant 
ships sailing for Liverpool, — and many other stately 
vessels bound for southern ports or foreign lands. Now 
you may see in Boston harbor not a forest of masts but 
great funnels painted to show the lines to which the 
boats belong, and marking a grander commerce than that 
which put out for the Indies long years ago ; for to-day 
Boston is the second American port. The great freight 



BOSTON AND THE BERKSHIRES 13 

yards of the railways are close upon the clocks, and 
travelers from the West may come into either of two 
great stations, one of which is the largest railway ter- 
minal in the world. In and about Boston are more than a 
million people, reaching out with one hand for the riches 
of the great land to the west, and with the other passing 
them over the seas to the nations on the farther side. 

Man has taken a land of dense forests, stony hills, and 
wild valleys, and subdued it. It is dotted with cities, 
crossed by roads, and is one of the great gateways of 
North America. 



CHAPTER II 

PIONEERS OF THE MOHAWK AND THE HUDSON 

If a stranger from a distant land should come to New 
York, he might take an elevated train at the Battery 
and ride to the upper end of Harlem. He would then 
have seen Manhattan island, so named by the Indians, 
who but three hundred years ago built their wigwams 
there and paddled their canoes in the waters where great 
ships now wait for their cargoes. If the visitor should 
stay for a time, he might find that Harlem used to be 
spelled Haarlem, from a famous old town in Holland. 
He might walk through Bleecker street, or Cortlandt 
street, or see Stuyvesant square, and learn that these 
hard names belonged to old Dutch families ; and if he 
studied history, he would find that the town was once 
called New Amsterdam and was settled by Dutchmen 
from Holland. They named the river on the west of the 
island the Great North river, to distinguish it from the 
Delaware, or Great South river, and they planned to 
keep all the land about these two streams and to call 
it New Netherland. 

Rocks and trees covered most of Manhattan island at 
that time, but the Dutch had a small village at its south 
end, where they built a fort and set up windmills, which 
ground the corn and made the place look like a town in 

14 



PIONEERS OF THE MOHAWK AND HUDSON 15 

Holland. The Indians did not like the windmills with 
their "big teeth biting the corn in pieces," but they were 
usually friendly with the settlers, sometimes sitting before 
the fireplaces in the houses and eating supawn, or mush 
and milk, with their white friends. Little did the Indian 
dream what a bargain he offered to the white man when 
he consented to sell the whole island for a sum equal to 
twenty-four dollars ; and the Dutchman, to do him jus- 
tice, w^as equally ignorant. 

All this came about because Henry Hudson with a 
Dutch vessel, the Half Moo Ji, had sailed into the harbor 
in 1609, and had explored the river for a long distance 
from its mouth. Hudson was an Englishman, but with 
most people he has had to pass for a Dutchman. He 
has come down in stories as Hendrick instead of Henry, 
no doubt because he commanded a ship belonging to a 
Dutch company, and because a Dutch colony was soon 
planted at the mouth of the river which he discovered. 

Hudson spent a month of early autumn about Man- 
hattan and on the river which afterwards took his name. 
Sailing was easy, for the channel is cut so deep into the 
land that the tides, which rise and fall on the ocean 
border by day and night, push far up the Hudson and 
make it like an inland sea. In w^hat w^e call the High- 
lands Hudson found the river narrow, with rocky cliffs 
rising far above him. Beyond he saw lowlands covered 
with trees, and stretching west to the foot of the Catskill 
mountains. He went at least as far as the place where 
Albany now stands, but there he found the water shallow 
and turned his ship about, giving up the idea of reaching 
the Indies by going that way. He did not know that a 



1 6 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

few miles to the west a deep valley lies open through 
the mountains, a valley which is now full of busy people 
and is more important for travel and trade than a dozen 
northwest passages to China would be. 




Fig. 6. Henry Hudson 



It was not long before this valley which leads to the 
west was found, and by a real Dutchman. Only five years 
after Hudson's voyage Dutch traders built a fort near 
the spot where Albany now stands. Shortly afterwards. 



PIONEERS OF THE MOHAWK AND HUDSON 17 

in 1624, the first settlers came and founded Fort Orange, 
which is now Albany. Arent Van Curler came over 
from Holland in 1630 and made his home near Fort 
Orange. He was an able man and became friendly with 
the Indians. They called him "Brother Corlear " and 
spoke of him as their "good friend." A few years ago 
a diary kept by Van Curler was found in an old Dutch 
garret, where it had lain for two hundred and sixty 
years. It told the story of a journey that he made in 
1634, only four years after he came to America. Setting 
out on December 11, he traveled up the valley of the 
Mohawk until he reached the home of the Oneida In- 
dians in central New York. He stayed with them nearly 
two weeks, and then returned to Fort Orange, where 
he arrived on January 19. This is the earliest record of 
a white man's journey through a region which now con- 
tains large towns and is traversed by many railway trains 
every day in the year. 

No one knows how long there had been Indians and 
Indian trails in the Mohawk valley. These trails Van 
Curler followed, often coming upon some of the red men 
themselves, and visiting them in a friendly way. They, 
as well as the white settlers who followed them, chose 
the flat, rich lands along the river, for here it was easy 
to beat a path, and with their bark canoes they could 
travel and fish. The Indians entertained Van Curler 
with baked pumpkins, turkey, bear meat, and venison. 
As the turkey is an American bird, we may be sure that 
it was new to the Dutch explorer. 

These Indians, with whom Van Curler and all the New 
York colonists had much to do, were of several tribes. 



l8 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

— the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and 
Senecas. All together they were known as the Iroquois 
(Tr-6-kwoi'), or Iroquois Nation, a kind of confederation 
which met in council and went forth together to war. 
They called their five-fold league The Long House, from 
the style of dwelling which was common among them, 

— a long house in which as many as twenty families 
sometimes lived. The Iroquois built villages, cultivated 
plots of land, and sometimes planted apple orchards. 
They were often eloquent orators and always fierce 
fighters. Among the surrounding tribes they were greatly 
feared. They sailed on lake Ontario and lake Erie in 
their birch-bark canoes, and they followed the trails far 
eastward down the Mohawk valley. Before the white 
men came these fierce warriors occasionally invaded 
New England, to the terror of the weaker tribes. Some- 
times they followed up their conquests by exacting a 
tribute of wampum. After Fort Orange was founded 
they went there with their packs of beaver skins and 
other furs to trade for clothes and trinkets. 

In fact the white man's principal interest for many 
years was to barter for furs. The Dutch, and soon after- 
wards the English, bid for the trade from their settle- 
ments on the Hudson, and the French did the same 
from their forts on the St. Lawrence and the Great 
Lakes. Thus there was much letter writing and much 
fighting among the colonists, while each side tried to 
make friends of the Indians and get the whole of the 
fur trade. The result was that either in war or in 
trade the white men and the savages were always going 
up and down the Mohawk valley, which thus was a 



PIONEERS OF THE MOHAWK AND HUDSON 19 

well-traveled path long before there were turnpike roads, 
canals, or steam cars. 

When Van Curler made his journey into the Indian 
country, he did not reach the Mohawk river at once on 
leaving Fort Orange, but traveled for about sixteen 
miles across a sandy and half-barren stretch of scrubby 
pine woods. He came down to the river where its rich 
bottom lands spread out widely and where several large 
islands are inclosed by parts of the stream. South and 
east of these flats are the sand barrens, and on the west 
are high hills through which, by a deep, narrow gap, the 
Mohawk flows. The Indians called this place " Scho- 
nowe," or "gateway." It was well named, for entering 
by this gate one can go to the foot of the Rocky moun- 
tains without climbing any heights. 

A few years before his death Van Curler led a small 
band of colonists from Fort Orange, bought the "great 
flats " from the Mohawk Indians, and founded a town, 
calling it Schenectady, which is the old Indian name 
changed in its spelhng. No easy time did these settlers 
have, for theirs was for many years the frontier town and 
they never knew when hostile savages might come down 
upon them to burn their houses and take their scalps. 
In 1690, twenty-eight years after the town was founded, 
a company of French and Indians from Montreal sur- 
prised Schenectady in the night, burned most of the 
houses, and killed about sixty of the people, taking 
others captive. But Dutchmen rarely give up an under- 
taking, and they soon rebuilt their town. It was an 
important place, for here was the end of the "carry" 
over the pine barrens from the Hudson, and here began 



20 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



the navigation of the river, which for a hundred years 
was the best means of carrying supplies up the valley 
and into central New York. 

The traveler of to-day on the New York Central Rail- 
way sees on Van Curler's "great flats" the flourishing 
city of Schenectady, with its shops and houses, its col- 
lege, and its vast facto- 
ries for the manufacture 
of locomotives and elec- 
trical supplies. 

It is true that the 
Dutch pioneers played 
an important part in the 
early history of the state 
and are still widely repre- 
sented by their descend- 
ants in the Mohawk val- 
ley, but the leading spirit 
of colonial days on the 
river was a native of Ire- 
land who came when a 
young man to manage 
his uncle's estates in America. This was in 1738, nearly 
fifty years after the Schenectady massacre. The young 
man, who was in the confidence of the governor of New 
York and of the king as well, is known to all readers of 
American history as Sir William Johnson. 

He built a fine stone mansion a short distance west 
of the present city of Amsterdam and lived there many 
years. He also founded Johnstown, a few miles to the 
north, now a thriving little city. He dealt honestly with 




Fig. 7. Sir William Johnson 
See Fort Johnson, Fig. 9 



PIONEERS OF THE MOHAWK AND HUDSON 2 1 

the Indians, when many tried to get their lands by 
fraud, and he served as a high officer in the French 
and Indian wars. 

As the Dutch settled the lower Mohawk valley, so 
the upper parts were taken up and the forests cleared 
by Yankees from New England. One of these was 
Hugh White, a sturdy man with several grown children. 
He left Middletown, Connecticut, in 1784, and came by 
water to Albany, sending one of his sons overland to 
drive two pair of oxen. Father and son met in Albany 
and went together across the sands to Schenectady, 
where they bought a boat to take some of the goods up 
the river. Four miles west of where Utica now stands 
they stopped, cut a few trees, and built a hut to shelter 
them until they could raise crops and have a better 
home. Thus the ancient village of VVhitesboro was 
founded. White was one of many hardy and brave men 
who settled in central New York at that time, and they 
doubtless thought that they had gone a long way "out 
West." Certainly their journey took more time than the 
emigrant would now need to reach California or Oregon. 

To cut the trees, build cabins, guard against the sav- 
ages, and get enough to eat and wear gave the settlers 
plenty to do. Only the simplest ways of living were 
possible. Until a grist mill was built they often used 
samp mortars, such as the Indians made. They took a 
section of white ash log three feet long, and putting 
coals of fire on one end, kept them burning with a hand 
bellows until the hole was deep enough to hold the 
corn, which was then pounded for their meals of hominy. 
By and by a mill was built, and here settlers often came 



22 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

from a distance of many miles, sometimes carrying their 
grists on their backs. A dozen years after White came, 
General William Floyd set up another mill in the northern 
part of what is now Oneida county. He was one of the 
signers of the Declaration of Independence. 

One settler cleared several acres and planted corn 
with pumpkin seeds sprinkled in. The pigeons pulled 
up all the corn, but hundreds of great pumpkins grew 
and ripened. Since the crop was hardly enough, how- 
ever, for either men or beasts, the latter had to be fed 
the next winter on the small top boughs of the elm, 
maple, and bass wood. 

Much use was made of the river, for the only roads 
were Indian paths through the woods on the river flats. 
People and freight were carried in long, light boats 
suited to river traffic and known as bateaux (ba-tos'). 
These could be propelled with oars, but poles were 
necessary going upstream against a stiff current. It 
was impossible to go up the Mohawk from the Hudson 
above Albany, on account of the great falls at Cohoes; 
hence the long carry to Schenectady. From that place, 
by hard work, the boatmen could make their way up to 
Little Falls, where the water descends forty feet in roar- 
ing rapids. Here the loads and the bateaux had to be 
carried along the banks to the still water above, where, 
with many windings and doublings on their course, the 
voyagers could reach the Oneida Carrying Place, or Fort 
Stanwix. There they unloaded again, and for a mile or 
more tramped across low ground to Wood creek, a little 
stream flowing into Oneida lake, and thence into Os- 
wego river and lake Ontario. The city of Rome stands 



PIONEERS OF THE MOHAWK AND HUDSON 23 

exactly on the road followed by the " carry." This was 
an important place, and was called by the Dutch Trow 
Plat, while to the Indians it was De-o-wain-sta, " the 
place where canoes are carried across." Several forts 
were built there, of which the most famous was Fort 
Stanwix. We should think Wood creek a difficult bit 
of navigation. It was a small stream, very crooked, and 




Fig. 8. Genesee Street, Utica 
Part of the old Genesee road 

often interrupted by fallen trees. In times of low water 
the boats were dragged up and even down the creek by 
horses walking in the water. 

The first merchant of old Fort Schuyler (Utica) was 
John Post, who had served his country well through the 
Revolution. In 1790 he brought hither his wife, three 
little children, and a carpenter from Schenectady, after 
a voyage of about nine days up the river. Near the 
long-used fording place he built a store, at the foot of 



24 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

what is now Genesee street. Here he supphed the sim- 
ple needs of the few famihes in the new hamlet, and 
bought furs and ginseng of the Indians, giving in ex- 
change paint, powder, shot, cloth, beads, mirrors, and, 
it must be added, rum also. Thus the fact that the river 
was shallow at this point and could be passed without a 
bridge or a boat led to the founding of the city of Utica. 

The first regular mail reached the settlement in 1793, 
the post rider being allowed twenty-eight hours to come 
up from Canajoharie, a distance of about forty miles, 
now traversed by many trains in much less than an 
hour. On one occasion the Fort Schuyler settlement 
received six letters in one mail. The people would 
hardly believe this astonishing fact until John Post, who 
had been made postmaster, assured them that it was 
true. Post established stages and lines of boats to 
Schenectady, and soon had a large business, for people 
were pouring into western New York to settle upon its 
fertile lands. 

All the boats did not go down to Oswego and lake 
Ontario. Some turned and entered the Seneca river, 
following its slow and winding waters to the country 
now lying between Syracuse and Rochester. But these 
boats were not equal to the traffic, for the new farms 
were producing grain to be transported, and the people 
needed many articles from the older towns on the 
Atlantic coast. Hence about a dozen years after Hugh 
White built his first cabin by the river, the state legis- 
lature took up the question of transportation and built a 
great road, a hundred miles long, from Fort Schuyler, or 
the future Utica, to Geneva, at the foot of Seneca lake. 



PIONEERS OF THE MOHAWK AND HUDSON 25 

The road as laid out was six rods wide. It was 
improved for a width of four rods by the use of gravel 
and logs where the ground was soft and swampy, as 
much of it was in those days, being flat and shaded by 
trees. Over the famous Genesee road, as it was called, 
thousands of people went not only to the rich valley of the 
Genesee in western New York but also on to Ohio, and 
even to the prairies of the Mississippi river. Genesee 
street in Utica and Genesee street in Syracuse are parts 
of this road. The historian tells of it as a triumph, for 
it was an Indian path in June, and before September 
was over a stage had started at Fort Schuyler, and on 
the afternoon of the third day had deposited its four 
passengers at the hotel in Geneva. After this wagons 
and stages began to run frequently between Albany and 
Geneva. A wagon could carry fourteen barrels of flour 
eastward, and in about a month could return to Geneva 
from Albany with a load of needed supplies. In five 
weeks, one winter, five hundred and seventy sleighs 
carrying families passed through Geneva to lands farther 
west. 

Geneva was quite a metropolis in those days, when 
there was nothing but woods where Syracuse and 
Rochester now are. Regular markets were held there, 
for there were fine farms and orchards about the beauti- 
ful shores of Seneca lake. It is recorded as remarkable 
that one settler had " dressed up " an old Indian orchard 
and made "one hundred barrels of cyder." 

We might think that the founders of the city of 
Rochester would have come in by the Genesee road, 
but they did not. Far to the south, at Hagerstown in 



26 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



Mar^'land, a country already old, lived Colonel Rochester. 
He heard of the Genesee lands and at last bought, with 
his partners, a hundred acres by the falls, where the city 
now stands. When the little family procession passed 
down the street and entered upon the long journey up 
the Susquehanna valley to western New York, Roches- 
ter's friends in Hagerstown wept to see him go. They 




Fig. 9. Old Fort Johnson, Amsterdam, New York 
Built by Sir William Johnson, 1742 

thought that he had thrown his money away in buying 
swamp lands where only mosquitoes, rattlesnakes, and 
bears could live, but he saw farther than they did. If 
he had been unwilling to take any risk, he would never 
have laid out the first streets of the prosperous city 
which now bears his name. 

Syracuse, like Utica and Rochester, had its own way 
of beginning. We can truly say that at first salt made 




SCALE OF MILES 



10 20 40 60 80 100 



New York, Lake Erie and Western Railroad 
Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad 
New York Central and Hudson River Railroad 
New York, Ontario and Western Railroad 
Delaware and Hudson Railroad 
Erie Canal (old location) 



PIONEERS OF THE MOHAWK AND HUDSON 27 

the city. The beds of salt are not directly under Syra- 
cuse, but are in the hills not far away. The water from 
the rains and springs dissolves some of this salt, and as 
it flows down it fills the grav^els in and around the town. 
While all was yet forest the Indian women had made 
salt from the brine which oozed up in the springs. So 
long ago as 1770, five years before the Revolution, the 
Delaware Indians went after Onondaga salt, and a little 
of it w^as now and then brought down to Albany. Some- 
times it was sold far down the St. LawTcnce in Quebec. 

The pioneers first made salt there in 1788. This was 
several years before the Genesee road was cut through 
the woods. One of these men, a Mr. Danforth, whose 
name a suburb of Syracuse now bears, used to put his 
coat on his head for a cushion and on that carry out a 
large kettle to the springs. He would put a pole across 
crotched sticks, hang up the kettle, and go to work to 
make salt. When he had made enough for the time he 
w^ould hide his kettle in the bushes and bring home his 
salt. By and by so many hundreds of bushels were made 
by the settlers that the government of the state framed 
laws to regulate the making and selling of the salt, and 
as time went on a town arose and grew into a city. 
Many years later rock salt w^as found deep down under 
the surface farther west, and since that discovery the 
business of Syracuse has. become more and more varied 
in character. 

The history of the state of New York shows well 
how the New World was settled along the whole Atlantic 
coast. The white men from Europe found first Manhat- 
tan island and the harbor. Then they followed the lead 



28 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

of a river and made a settlement that was to be Albany. 
Still they let a river guide them, this time the Mohawk, 
and it led them westward. They pushed their boats up 
the stream, and on land they widened the trails of the 
red men. Near its head the Mohawk valley led out into 
the wide, rich plains south and east of lake Ontario. 
Soon there were so many people that a good road 
became necessary. When the good road was made it 
brought more people, and thus the foundations of the 
Empire State were laid. 



CHAPTER III 

ORISKANY, A BATTLE OF THE REVOLUTION 

About halfway between old Fort Schuyler, or Utica, 
and Fort Stanwix, which is now Rome, is the village of 
Oriskany. A mile or two west of this small town, in a 
field south of the Mohawk river, stands a monument 
raised in memory of a fierce battle fought on that slope in 
the year following the Declaration of Independence. On 
the pedestal are four tablets in bronze, one of which shows 
a wounded general sitting on the ground in the woods, 
with his hand raised, giving orders to his men. The time 
was 1777, the strife was the battle of Oriskany, and the 
brave and suffering general was Nicholas Herkimer. 

On another of the tablets is this inscription : 



Here was fought 

The battle of Oriskany 

On the 6th day of August, 1777. 

Here British invasion was checked and thwarted. 

Here General Nicholas Herkimer, 

Intrepid leader of the American forces, 

Though mortally wounded kept his command of the fight 

Till the enemy had fled. 

The life blood of more than 

Two hundred patriot heroes 

Made this battle ground 

Sacred forever. 



29 



30 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



After the battle Herkimer was carried clown the 
valley to his home, where a few days later he died. 
On the field he had calmly lighted his pipe and smoked 
it as he gave his orders, refusing to be carried to a safe 
place and saying, " I will face the enemy." If the bat- 
tle has its monument, so the hero that won it has his, 
and the traveler on the New York Central Railway can 




Fig. io. Oriskany Battle Monument, a Few Miles 
West of Utica 

see both, but thirty miles apart, the one at Oriskany, the 
other a short distance down the valley from Little Falls. 
Herkimer was not a trained soldier, but a plain farmer 
of the valley. His letters and military orders show us 
that he could spell as poorly as any of his neighbors, and 
that is saying a good deal. His army was made up of 
these same simple neighbors, who, though they did not 



ORISKANY, A BATTLE OF THE REVOLUTION 31 

know much about soldierly marching, were good shots 
and hard hitters, fighting not for pay but to save their 
liberty and to protect their homes from the cruel savages. 

The names of many of these men are on the battle 
monument, — names such as Groot, Petrie, Dunckel, 
Klock, Kraus, Sammons, Schnell, Van Horn, and Zim- 
merman. We do not need to be told that these were not 
men of English blood ; indeed, many of them belonged 
to those same Dutch families which we saw settling in 
the Hudson and Mohawk valleys. And some, like the 
last one, were not Dutch but German, and their ancestors 
came not from Holland but from a land farther up the 
Rhine. They had been driven out by the persecutions 
of one of the French kings and had come to America. 
They had had a hard time, suffering much from task- 
masters, from poverty, and from the savages, until finally 
they had gone farther west in the Mohawk valley and had 
received good lands lying eastward from Utica. There 
they became comfortable and prosperous. They answered 
promptly the brave Herkimer's call to arms, and many of 
them gave their lives for home and country at Oriskany. 

We must now tell the other side of the story and 
see who the invaders were and where they came from. 
In Revolutionary days nearly all the people of New 
York were in its two great valleys. One could go up 
the Hudson from New York, pass Albany and Fort 
Edward, and, without finding high ground, enter the 
valley of lake Champlain and go down to Montreal 
on the St. Lawrence. Here, then, was an easy valley 
road from the sea at New York into Canada. Coming 
either way, one could turn off to the west at Fort 



32 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

Orange or Albany and go up the Mohawk and down to 
Oswego on lake Ontario. In these two valleys were all 
the farms, the towns, and of course the forts. There 
were forts at Oswego and where Rome, Utica, and 
Albany are ; at Fort Edward, Fort Ann, Ticonderoga, 
and many other places, making a chain of defenses in 
these valleys. West of the Hudson and south of the 
Mohawk were the high, rough woods of the Catskills ; 
while west of lake Champlain and north of the Mohawk 
were the rugged Adirondacks, without roads or clear- 
ings. And because the roads, the homes, and the forts 
were in the valleys, we shall almost always find the 
armies and the fighting there. 

This will help us to understand the plan which the 
British made in 1777, by which they felt sure of crush- 
ing the rebellion. The year before they had to leave 
Boston and had come around to New York. New York 
was not so large as Philadelphia then, but it was an 
important place, for it was the key to the Hudson 
valley. The British generals decided to send one army 
up the Hudson to destroy the forts and beat back the 
colonists. This army was under General Howe. Another 
army, commanded by General Burgoyne, was to come 
from the St. Lawrence up lake Champlain and through 
the woods by Fort Edward to Albany. Burgoyne was a 
brave officer, but he was conceited, and he felt too sure 
that he could do his part easily. He was confident that 
when he marched through the country many colonists 
would run to place themselves under the English flag. 
In a few weeks be learned that these backwoods Amer- 
icans were quite ready to meet and give battle to the 



ORISKANY, A BATTLE OF THE REVOLUTIOxN 33 



combined forces of the British regulars, the hired Ger- 
man soldiers, and the Indians with whom they were 



in league. 



There was yet a third division in this campaign. A 
British force under General St. Leger had come up the 
St. Lawrence and lake Ontario to Oswego. St. Leger 







Fig. it. General Nicholas Herkimer directing the 
Battle of Oriskany 

also had with him many Indians, and these were com- 
manded by Joseph Brant, a famous chief, who had had 
much to do with white men and who was well educated. 
This third army was to go east, over the Oneida Carry- 
ing Place and down the Mohawk to Albany. By this 
pretty plan three armies, one from the south under 
Howe, one from the north under Burgoyne, and one 



34 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

from the west under St. Leger, were to meet in Albany. 
They would put British soldiers in every fort on the 
way, capture and disarm the rebels, and have all New 
York under their feet. More than this, they would thus 
shut off New England from Pennsylvania and Virginia, 
cutting the unruly colonies into two parts so that they 
could not help each other. 

But the scheme, brilliant as it was, would not work. 
None of the British armies reached Albany. Howe did 
not, perhaps because he did not try. Burgoyne and 
St. Leger did not, because they could not : there was 
altogether too much in the way. We shall now see how 
this happened. 

St. Leger brought into the Mohawk valley from Os- 
wego an army of seventeen hundred men. Some were 
British, some were Hessians or hired German soldiers, 
and the rest were Indians under Joseph Brant. They 
thought that it would not be much trouble to take Fort 
Stanwix and then go down the valley, burning and 
killing as they went, until they should meet the other 
armies of the king at Albany. But the colonists sent 
more soldiers to defend the fort, and Colonel Peter 
Gansevoort, who w^as in command, had under him nearly 
a thousand men. Just before the British came in sight 
a stock of provisions, brought on several boats up the 
river, had been safely delivered within the defenses. 
This was early in August, and only about seven weeks 
before Congress had adopted the style of American flag 
which we know so well. There was no flag at Fort 
Stanwix, so the garrison set about making one. They 
cut up shirts to make the white. The blue came from a 



ORISKANY, A BATTLE OF THE REVOLUTION 35 

cloak captured not long before in a battle, on the Mud- 
son, by Colonel Marinus Willett, one of the bravest 
commanders within the fort. The red is said to have 
been taken from a petticoat. Certain it is that a patriot 
flag was made, and some think that it was the first 
American flag ever raised over a fortification. 

While the British were besieging Fort Stanwix, Gen- 
eral Herkimer had called out the men of the valley, 
bidding all between the ages of sixteen and sixty make 
ready for battle. The boys and old men were to do 
their best to care for the families and to defend their 
homes. Eight hundred men gathered under Herkimer 
and marched to help the garrison of the fort. Hearing 
of this, part of the British army, including the Indians, 
came down the valley to head off Herkimer. They met 
at Oriskany. The farmer soldiers were hurrying up the 
valley without due watching for sudden attack, while the 
enemy placed themselves in ambush around a low field 
which was wooded and swampy. Through this field the 
road ran, and when Herkimer's men were well down 
into it the Indians opened a hot fire, which threw the 
patriots into disorder. They soon rallied and fought 
fiercely for five hours, until two hundred of them had 
lost their lives. Early in the battle Herkimer was shot, 
but he forgot his pain when he saw his men victorious. 
Much of the fighting was of the Indian sort, from behind 
trees, for the Dutchmen well knew the ways of the 
savages. They saw that when one man fired from be- 
hind a tree an Indian would rush forward to tomahawk 
him before he could load his gun for another shot. So 
they were ordered to stand by twos and take turns in 



36 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



firing. Thus when the Indian ran forward with his toma- 
hawk he would receive a bullet from the other man's gun. 
Under John Johnson, the son of Sir William Johnson, 
were many Tories from the valley. They and the pa- 
triots often recognized each other as former neighbors, 
and then the fight was more stubborn than ever, for 
the soldiers of freedom were bitterly angry to find old 




Fig. 12. Nicholas Herkimer's Monument 

To the right is the old mansion in which he lived. Near Little Falls, 

New York 



friends in arms against them. During the battle a 
terrific thunder-shower came up, and both sides stopped 
fighting, having enough to do to keep their powder and 
guns dry. The dark storm passed and the strife went 
on again. At length the Indians grew tired and ran, 
leaving the field to Herkimer and his little army. The 
importance of a conflict is not always in proportion to 
the size of the armies engaged, and in what it did for 



ORISKANY, A BATTLE OF THE REVOLUTION 37 

freedom Oriskany takes high place among the battles 
of modern times. 

The enemy went back to the siege of Fort Stanwix, 
and soon a new force of patriots under Benedict Arnold 
was sent up the valley to relieve the fort. It was dur- 
ing this march that an ignorant but cunning fellow 
named Han Yost Schuyler was caught, tried, and con- 
demned to die as a spy. Because his friends pleaded for 
his Hfe Arnold finally told him that he might live if he 
would go up to Fort Stanwix and make the Indians and 
British believe that a great army was marching against 
them. Meanwhile the man's brother was held as a hos- 
tage, to be punished if the promise was not fulfilled. 
Han Yost did his part so well that St. Leger, taking 
fright, left the fort in great haste and his expedition 
was entirely broken up. Why he did not have a gay 
march down to Albany is now quite plain. 

A few days after the battle of Oriskany a number of 
men drove some cattle to Fort Stanwix as food for the 
soldiers. Several women went with them on horseback 
to visit their husbands, who belonged to the garrison. 
At the ford of the river, now the Genesee street crossing 
in Utica, a big Dutchman, who did not wish to get wet, 
leaped uninvited upon a horse behind one of the women. 
The horse did not like the double load, and made great 
sport by throwing the Dutchman into the middle of the 
stream, while he carried his mistress over in safety. 

General Burgoyne came nearer Albany than did 
St. Leger. Indeed he went to Albany, but not until he 
had lost his army. He had promptly captured Ticon- 
deroga on lake Champlain, and this success gave him 



38 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

high hopes and sent rejoicing throughout Great Britain ; 
but the patriots, by felling trees and cutting away 
bridges, hindered his southward march in every way. 
He sent a thousand of his German soldiers across to 
Bennington, among the Green mountains, to capture 
stores which he knew were there. But General Stark 
was there also, with a little army from New Hampshire 
and Massachusetts, and the thousand Hessians did not 
go back to help Burgoyne. He had left another thou- 
sand to guard Ticonderoga, and so he was two thousand 
short. All this time the patriot army was growing, for 
the men of the Hudson valley were maddened when 
they saw the bloodthirsty Indians marching with the 
English, and, to Burgoyne's surprise, they had no mind 
to fight for the king. Howe did not come, St. Leger 
did not come, and the provisions were getting short. 
These could only come along the road from the north, 
and the colonists were already marching in behind Bur- 
goyne's army to cut his line of communications. He 
knew that he must fight or starve. He chose to fight. 
The battle was fought on Bemis Heights, a range of 
hills west of the Hudson, a short distance north of the 
little village of Stillwater. The British general, after 
his defeat, withdrew a few miles northward and surren- 
dered his army near the present town of Schuylerville. 
A tall monument marks the place. This was the battle 
of Saratoga, fought in old Saratoga, which is several 
miles from the famous resort of that name. 

So it was that up and down these beautiful valleys 
went armies and scouting bands, as well as peaceful 
emigrants with their oxen, their stages, and their small 



ORISKANY, A BATTLE OF THE REVOLUTION 39 

freight boats. One cannot go far along the Hudson or 
the Mohawk without finding the site of an Indian vil- 
lage, the foundations of an old fort, the homestead of 
a Revolutionary hero, or an ancient place of worship. 
When we see the great railways and swift trains, the 
bundles of telegraph wires, the noisy cities and great 
mills of to-day, we can remember Philip Schuyler, Sir 
William Johnson, Marinus Willett, Peter Gansevoort, 
and Nicholas Herkimer. There were no nobler patriots, 
even in Virginia and Massachusetts, than these men of 
the Mohawk valley. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE ERIE CANAL 

If we think that the men of a hundred years ago 
were people with few wants, who were wilUng to let 
others do the trading and make the fortunes, we are 
quite in the wrong. They were as eager in business as 
are the driving Americans of to-day. So long ago as 
1683 Thomas Dongan, a well-born Irishman, came to 
New York to be its governor. In his letters to the gov- 
ernment in London he said a great deal about the fur 
trade and the danger of its going to other cities. Once 
he reported that two hundred packs of beaver skins had 
gone down the Susquehanna river and across to Phila- 
delphia instead of being brought by the Mohawk to 
New York, and he thought that if this traffic continued 
New York would be ruined. 

As time went on the rivalry grew stronger and 
stronger. All the cities on the coast were bidding for 
the western trade. The '' West " was then the Genesee 
country, the plains along the Lakes, and the rich lands 
of the Ohio valley. Some of the trade from the Lakes 
and the Genesee went down the St. Lawrence. Heavy 
articles especially were sent to Quebec, while lighter 
freight was taken overland down the Mohawk. When 
De Witt Clinton was stirring up the legislature and the 

40 



THE ERIE CANAL 4 1 

people of New York, he told them he was very sorry to 
learn that merchandise from Montreal was sold in the 
state for less than New York prices. This was because 
there was transportation by water from Montreal, and 
the St. Lawrence merchants could afford to undersell 
those of New York. 

Many people thought that the wheat and flour and 
other products of western New York would all go down 
the Susquehanna to Baltimore and Philadelphia. Rough 
boats known as " arks " were built and floated down the 
river in the high water caused by the melting of the 
snows in the Allegheny highlands. From two to five 
hundred barrels of flour were carried in one of these 
craft. As the boats could not be sailed up the river, 
they were taken to pieces at the end of the voyage and 
sold for lumber. We have already seen that Colonel 
Rochester followed this valley in migrating to the Gen- 
esee river, and one writer calls attention to the fact 
that in seven days several elderly people had come 
quite comfortably by this route from Baltimore to Bath 
in the southwestern part of New York. One could now 
travel from San Francisco to New York and almost 
halfway across the Atlantic ocean in that time. 

Other cities also hoped to secure some of the profits 
of dealing with the rapidly growing West. The tourist 
on his way down the Potomac to Mount Vernon, the 
home of Washington, will pass by Alexandria, a quiet 
old town of about fifteen thousand people. Washington 
himself thought it possible that Alexandria might get a 
good share of the trade from Detroit and other places 
on the Lakes and on the Ohio river. All this seems 



42 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

strange to us, because since the days of our great-grand- 
fathers the traffic has been going largely to New York. 
The cause of the change was the Erie canal. Yet in 
i8 18, a few months after the canal was begun, an Albany 
newspaper discussed very earnestly, as one of the chief 
questions of the day, the danger that Philadelphia would 
take away the western trade. 

Flour, salt, and potash had been taken to New York 
in large quantities, but all these products were carried 
as far as Schenectady in little ten-ton boats, by way of 
Wood creek and the Mohawk. As the business grew it 
was seen to be impossible always to drag the boats up 
Wood creek with horses, and that the small canal, ten feet 
wide, which had been cut around the rapids at Little 
Falls, could not serve the purposes of another generation. 

Hence for many years there had been talk of a canal 
to join the Lakes and the Hudson, thus making naviga- 
tion without a break from the interior of the country to 
the Atlantic ocean at New York. The credit for first 
thinking of such a canal has been claimed for several 
men, but probably it was '' in the air," and many thought 
of it at about the same time. 

Gouverneur Morris, one of the famous New York 
statesmen of the day, proposed that lake Erie should 
be '' tapped " and its waters led to the Hudson. The sur- 
face of this lake is five hundred and seventy-three feet 
above tide water at Albany. It was Morris's idea to dig 
a channel, with a gently sloping bottom, which should 
send the water east in a stream deep enough to float 
a boat. The water thus turned from its course would 
go to Albany instead of flowing through the Niagara 



TH*: ERIE CANAL 43 

and the St. Lawrence. There were, however, difficulties 
about the plan which Morris did not understand, and it 
was never carried out. 

The great water way is often known as *' Clinton's 
Ditch." This name was doubtless given in ridicule by 




Fig. m. De Witt Clinton 



those who did not think it could be built. There were 
many who laughed at the surveyors when they saw them 
looking about, using their levels, and driving their stakes 



44 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

in the woods and swamps. It was even said that to dig 
such a canal was impossible, that it would cost too much 
money, that it would take too much time, and that the 
canal itself could never be made to hold water. 

But Clinton and his supporters believed in it, and 
worked hard to make it a success. They said that the 
cost of carrying a ton of produce in wagons a distance 
of one hundred miles was about thirty-two dollars. The 
experience of others had proved that in canals a ton 
could be carried one mile for one cent, or a hundred 
miles for one dollar. There is a great difference between 
one dollar and thirty-two dollars, especially if the differ- 
ence is added to the cost of the wheat from which our 
bread is made, or of the lumber used in building our 
houses. Clinton himself thought that it might take ten 
or fifteen years to make the canal, but, as we shall see, 
it was finished in less time than he supposed. 

Clinton declared very truly that New York was espe- 
cially fortunate, for the surface made it an easy task to 
dig the ditch. There was no high or rough ground to be 
crossed, there was plenty of water to keep the canal full, 
and it would run through a fertile and rich country. As 
Clinton was governor of New York during much of the 
period in which the canal was made, his name is im- 
perishably connected with the great enterprise. He was 
once candidate for the office of President of the United 
States, but perhaps even that office, if he had been 
elected, would not have given him so much honor as did 
the building of this great public work. 

Canals were not new in Clinton's time. Long before 
the Christian era began men had dug them to carry 



THE ERIE CANAL 45 

water for various uses, such as irrigation and turning 
machinery. Often, as for hundreds of years in the fen 
country of England, canals have been used to drain wet 
or flooded lands and for moving boats. Even beavers 
have been known to dig ditches, which fill with water, 
that they may float the wood which they cut to the place 
where they build their dams and their homes. 

If a region is perfectly level, only a ditch and water are 
needed. But lands are not often level for more than short 
distances ; hence a canal consists commonly of a series 
of levels at different heights. Of course the boats niust 
be passed from one level to another by some means. If 
they are small, they can be dragged up or down between 
tvv^o levels ; but this method will not serve for large 
boats carrying many tons of coal, lumber, salt, or bricks, 
hence locks are generally used. A lock is a short sec- 
tion of a canal, long enough for the boats used, and hav- 
ing walls rising from the bottom of the lower level to 
the top of the upper one. There are big gates at each 
end. If a boat is to ascend, it runs into the lock on the 
lower level and the lower gates are closed. A small gate 
in the large upper gate is then opened and the water 
runs in from above, slowly raising the water in the lock 
and with it the boat. When the water in the lock is 
even with the water in the upper level, the big upper 
gates are swung open and the boat goes on its way. In 
a similar manner boats go down from higher to lower 
sections of the canal. Locks have been used in Italy and 
in Holland for more than four hundred years. 

On April 15, 1817, the legislature passed the law for 
the construction of the long ditch, and the first spade 



46 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



was set into the earth by Judge John Richardson at 
Rome, New York, on July 4 of the same year. This 
was forty-one years after the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, and it is plain that the country had grown much 
in wealth and numbers when a single state could start 
out to build a water way three hundred miles long. 




Fig. 14. Erie Canal, looking East from Genesee Street 
Bridge, Utica 

After the first spadeful of soil had been lifted, the citi- 
zens and the laborers eagerly seized the shovels, and 
thus everybody had a small share in beginning the great 
work. Guns were fired and there was much rejoicing. 

The men who took the contracts for digging short 
sections of the canal were mainly farmers who had gained 
good properties and who were living along the line. In 
those days, if any one had visited the men at work, he 



THE ERIE CANAL 47 

would not have seen crowds of foreign laborers living 
in huts, but men born and reared in the country round 
about. It was little more than twenty years since the 
Genesee road had been built through central New 
York, and there was still much forest. The trees grew 
rank and strong, and it was no light task to cut through 
the tangled network of roots that lay below the surface. 
First the trees were cut down, making a lane sixty feet 
wide, and in this the canal was dug to a width of forty feet. 
Powerful machines that could draw out stumps and pull 
over the largest trees were brought from Europe. The 
wheels of the stump machine were sixteen feet across. 
A plow with a sharp blade was also made, to cut down 
through the heavy carpet of fibers and small roots. 

Swiftly one piece after another of the canal was fin- 
ished and the water let in. The trench was found to hold 
water, and boats were soon busy hauling produce from 
town to town. In 1825 it was finished from Black Rock, 
or Buffalo, to Waterford, above Troy. The work had taken 
eight years and had cost a little less than eight million 
dollars. De Witt Clinton was right and the croakers 
were wrong. Perhaps it was hard at that time to find any 
one who did not think that he had always wanted a canal. 

There were, it is true, a few disappointed ones at 
Schenectady. There the wagons from Albany had 
always stopped, and there the boating up the Mohawk 
had begun. As all the loads had to be shifted between 
the river and the land journeys, there had been work for 
many men. Thus the place had grown up, and now that 
boats were to run through without change, some people 
naturally thought that the town would die out, or would 



48 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



at least lose much of its business. These few discon- 
tented folk, however, were hardly to be counted, among 
the thousands who exulted over the completed canal. 

A great celebration was arranged, and the rejoicings 
of the beginning were redoubled in the festivities at 
the end. Boats were made ready at Buffalo to take 
Governor Clinton and the other guests to New York. 




Fig. 15. Along the Canal in Syracuse 
Copyrighted, 1899, by A. P. Yates, Syracuse, N.Y. 

When the first boat entered the canal from lake Erie 
a cannon was fired. Cannon had been set within hearing 
distance all the way to the sea along the line of the 
canal. This way of sending news was the nearest ap- 
proach to the telegraph at that time. Soon the tidings 
of the great event came booming down among the 
cliffs of the Hudson and reached New York.^ 

1 The time allowed for the signaling from Buffalo to Sandy Hook 
was one hour and twenty minutes. This programme was substantially 
carried out. From Albany to Sandy Hook only twenty minutes were 
required. 



THE ERIE CAiNAL 



49 



Two kegs of lake Erie water were put on one of the 
boats at Buffalo, and we shall see what was done with 
them. There were also two barrels of fine apples which 
had been raised in an orchard at Niagara Falls. These 
were not to be eaten on the way, one barrel being for 
the Town Council of Troy, and the other for the city 
fathers of New York. Many people on both sides of 
the ocean are still eating fine apples from the trees 
of the Genesee country. 

One boat in the little fleet was called Noah's Ark, 
and on board were two eagles, a bear, some fawns, 
fishes, and birds, besides two Indian boys. These were 
sent to New York as "products of the West." At every 
town there was a celebration, and great was the excite- 
ment in such cities as Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, and 
Albany. There were salutes and feasts and speeches 
and prayers, and the gratitude and joy of the people 
fairly ran over. The greatest celebration of all was in 
New York, where everybody turned out to do honor to 
the occasion. The fine ladies boarded a special boat, 
and the "aquatic procession" went down through the 
bay to Sandy Hook. It was arranged that a messenger 
of Neptune, the sea god, should meet the fleet, inquire 
their errand, and lead them to his master's realm. Here 
Governor Clinton turned out the lake Erie water from 
the two kegs into the sea as a symbol of the joining of 
the lakes and the ocean. Then all the people went back 
to the city and had speeches and parades, feasts and 
fireworks, while the city-hall bell was rung for several 
hours. The illumination was said to be a fine one, but 
perhaps their lamps and candles would now look dim. 



50 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

After the canal was finished the carrying business was 
quite made over. Little was heard then about sending 
western New York fruit and grain to Philadelphia or 
Montreal or Alexandria. Freighting was so cheap that 
a man who had been selling his wheat for thirty cents 
a bushel now received a dollar for it. In the war with 
England, only a few years before, it had cost more to 
carry a cannon from Albany to Oswego than it had cost 
to make it. The journey had now become an easy and 




Fig. i6. Traveling by Packet on the Erie Canal 

simple matter. Two farmers built a boat of their own, 
loaded it with the produce of their farms, and took it 
down Seneca lake and all the way to New York. They 
were let out of the woods into the wide world. 

The canal was not entirely given up to the carry- 
ing of freight. People thought that it was a fine ex- 
perience to travel in the passenger boats, which were 
called " packets." These were considered as remarkable 
as are the limited express trains of to-day. The speed 
allowed by law was five miles an hour. To go faster 



THE ERIE CANAL 



51 



would drive the water against, the banks and injure 
them. The fare was five cents a mile including berth 
and table. It was said that a man could travel from 
New York to Buffalo with " the utmost comfort " and 
without fatigue. The journey cost eighteen dollars, and 
only took six days! We, of course, cannot help think- 
ing of the Empire State Express, which leaves New 
York at 8.30 a.m. and arrives in Buffalo at 4.50 p.m. 



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Fig. 17. Erie Canal and Solvay Works, Syracuse 



If the journey of those days seems long to us, we 
must remember that to most of the travelers the scen- 
ery was fresh and interesting, for it was a visit to a 
new land. The rocky highlands, the blue Catskills, the 
winding Mohawk, and the towns and farms of the 
interior were perhaps as full of interest as the morning 
paper is on the trains of to-day. From Utica to Syra- 
cuse, more than fifty miles, is one great level ; but on 
Hearing Rochester the canal follows an embankment 
across a valley, and the passengers in those days looked 



52 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

wonderingly down on the tops of trees. At Lockport 
they heard the clatter as they slowly rose by a long row 
of locks to the top of the chffs, and at Buffalo they 
looked out on a sea of fresh water. At Utica, Rome, 
Rochester, and other places, after a few years, side 
canals came in from north and south, from Binghamton 
and from the upper valley of the Genesee ; and up in 
the hills great reservoirs were built, with shallow canals 
known as ''feeders" leading down to the main trench. 
These were built to make sure that there should be 
water enough for dry seasons ; for locks will leak, and 
whenever a boat locks down a lockful of water goes on 
toward the sea. 

Now all was stir and growth. Buffalo had started 
on its way to become a great city. Rochester ground 
more wheat and Syracuse made more salt. There was 
no doubt that New York would soon be known as the 
metropolis of the western world, and " Clinton's Ditch " 
became the most famous of American canals. 



CHAPTER V 

THE NEW YORK CENTRAL RAILWAY 

The Erie canal had not long been finished when a 
new way of carrying men and merchandise came into 
use in New York. In the next year after the great 
celebration the legislature granted a charter to build a 
railroad from Albany to Schenectady. It is sometimes 
said that this was the first time in America that cars 
were drawn by means of steam. This is not true, but 
New York was not far behind some other states, and 
the De Witt Clinton train, of which a picture is shown 
in this chapter, looks as if it must have been one of the 
very earliest ones. This train made its trial trip in 183 i, 
which was seventeen years after George Stephenson 
had built his first locomotive in England. 

A railroad had been opened from Baltimore, a few 
miles to the west, the year before, and about the same 
time another was built in South Carolina. Two years 
earlier, in 1829, the Delaware and Hudson Canal Com- 
pany brought from England three locomotives, one of 
them built by Stephenson, to draw coal to their canal 
from their mines at Honesdale, Pennsylvania. In 1826 
a railroad four miles long was built at Quincy, Massa- 
chusetts, to carry granite from the quarries to the sea. 
It was called a tramway, and horses were used instead 

53 



54 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



of steam. If we go to England, we shall find that 
tramways have been used there for more than a hun- 
dred years. Thus it is not easy to say when the first 
railroad was built, and all writers do not tell the same 
story about it, but it is certain that steam cars were 
first used and long roads with iron tracks were first 
built a little less than a hundred years ago. 

If we study the De Witt Clinton train, we shall learn 
several things. Both the engine and the coaches were 




Fig. i8. The De Witt Clinton Train 



small and light compared with those used now. With 
the great speed of to-day, all the parts of a train must 
be very heavy in order to cling to the track. The engine 
of those days had four light driving wheels, and the engi- 
neer, it would seem, had to operate his engine while 
facing wind and storm. The cab looks very much like a 
common express wagon made heavier than usual ; and if 
we look at the passenger wagons, we shall see why passen- 
ger cars are called coaches. The first ones were coaches, 



THE NEW YORK CENTRAL RAILWAY 55 

and every picture of an old passenger train shows that 
the cars were modeled after the coaches of the stage 
lines of that age, except that the wheels were made 
with flat rims, with flanges to keep them on the track. 
The passengers certainly could not move about, and the 
high perches on the top look somewhat dangerous. One 
would think that the wind and the smoke of the locomo- 
tive could not have been pleasant. The men could not 
go into a smoking car, and if they had luncheon they 
must have brought it in their pockets. Nor could they 
tuck themselves snugly into a berth and sleep all night. 
These things, however, were not needed upcm a railroad 
that was only eighteen miles long. To this day dining 
cars and '* sleepers" are not so much used in England 
as in this country. Millions of people travel there, but 
the land is small, they go swiftly, and can usually eat 
and sleep at their journey's end. They still speak of the 
''wagons " of the "goods train," and English freight cars 
look almost like toys by the side of ours in America. 
This shows us how closely the railways and cars are 
related to common roads and vehicles. 

People laughed at railroads in these early days and 
had about as much faith in them as we now have in 
flying ma.chines. A few years ago men would have had 
the same sport about wireless telegraphy, or about talk- 
ing between New York and Chicago with a telephone. 
Mrs. Alice Morse Earle, who has written much about 
early life in New England, says that the farmers did not 
like railroads, for they thought that horses would soon 
be useless and would then be killed, and that there would 
be no demand for oats or hay. They were afraid, too, 



56 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

that the noise would frighten the hens so that they 
would not lay, that the sparks from the engine would 
burn up everything, and that the people would go crazy. 

There was some excuse for not enjoying railway 
travel, for the roadbeds were often made of solid rock, 
and the cars did not always have springs. The tracks 
were made of strap iron spiked down to wooden string- 
ers. These iron straps would sometimes become loose, 
and had an unpleasant way of curling up and piercing 
the floor of the coach where people were sitting. 

In these days it is more comfortable and probably 
safer to ride in a railway train than behind a horse. The 
Empire State Express runs from New York to Buffalo 
in eight hours and twenty minutes. It makes but four 
stops on the way and covers more than fifty-three miles 
an hour. When we compare this with the packet-boat 
time-table of seventy-five years ago we see how much 
time is now saved. 

To-day a man can board the Twentieth Century 
Limited in New York City at 2.45 in the afternoon and 
be set down in Chicago the next morning. He can do 
business nearly all of one day by the sea, and nearly all 
of the next day on the shore of lake Michigan. On 
the way he will find easy chairs, books and papers, a 
good bed, a fine table, a place to write, to be shaved, or 
to take a bath, and he may even read from time to time 
the prices of stocks as they are sent over the wire from 
New York and Chicago. But our comfortable traveler 
should not despise the early days. Perhaps he misses 
some of the good times that the great-grandfathers had 
in the Mohawk boats and along the Genesee road. 



THE NEW YORK CENTRAL RAILWAY 



57 



To go so fast and so far means that much has been 
done since the first small train came across the sand 
fields to Schenectady. Five years later the trains ran 
up to Utica. This was two hundred and two years after 
Arent Van Curler's journey along the same river. In two 
years more a little road, twenty-five miles long, had been 
finished between Syracuse and Auburn ; but it was not 
until 1839, when another winter had passed, that the 
link between Utica and Syracuse was completed. This 




Fig. ly. The Twentieth Century Limited 

ran much of the way through woods and swamps, and 
in some cases timbers or piles had to be driven deep to 
hold up the track. 

These roads were built by different companies, wdth 
no idea of joining them all into a through line. When, in 
time, there was talk of this the Utica people did not like 
it. They thought that it w^ould ruin the business of their 
town if passengers and freight need not be changed there 
and if trains went rushing through. But after a while 
all the links between New York and Buffalo were forged 
into one chain, or became a " trunk line," to put it in 
the modern way. Of course it would cost less to haul 



58 FROiM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

Genesee flour or Niagara county apples to New York if 
they could go through in the same car in which they 
were first locked. This soon became so plain that there 
was no further question as to uniting the various roads. 
We shall see how they all became one. 

Cornelius Vanderbilt was of Dutch descent and was 
born on Staten island in 1794. He grew up in the 
steamboat business, and by industry and foresight be- 
came the owner of various lines plying on the Hud- 
son, along the coast, and even across the Atlantic. 
He had so much to do with shipping that at length 
he was known as "Commodore" Vanderbilt, although 
this was a nickname and not a real title. By and by 
he began to buy railroads, and by 1869 he was able 
to unite those of the Hudson and those west of Albany 
into the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. 
His descendants have bought or leased many other roads, 
which, taken together, are often called the Vanderbilt 
system. This reaches far westward into many states and 
joins other great cities to the metropolis by lines of 
steel. 

Railways in Michigan and Ohio were tied to Vander- 
bilt's road, and wheat and many other products came 
to Buffalo not only on cars but by ships on the Great 
Lakes, and were then sent to New York and across the 
ocean. So the canal gradually did less business and the 
railroad did more, for people could travel faster by rail, 
and some things, like meat and fruit, must be carried 
swiftly or they will spoil on the way. Now, instead of 
ten-ton boats on the Mohawk, or the slow-going craft 
of " Clinton's Ditch," great freight trains rush down 



THE NEW YORK CENTRAL RAILWAY 



59 



the Mohawk valley, bearing nearly a hundred thousand 
bushels of grain behind one engine. Such a load would 
have fed George Washington's armies for a long time. 
After a while one track was not sufficient for so many 
trains going east and west. Too much time was lost 
in waiting on sidings and there was danger of collision. 
For this reason a second track was put down, then a 




Fig. 20. Rounding the Noses, Mohawk Valley 



third and a fourth, and now all the w^ay from Albany to 
Buffalo there are two tracks for passenger trains and 
two for freight. Dow^n the Hudson there are but two 
tracks, because the space between the river and the up- 
lands is so narrow. Many years ago a rival road, called 
the West Shore Railway, was built along the west bank 
of the Hudson, and then westward to Buffalo. This with 
its two tracks was bought by the owners of the Central 



6o FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

road, so that now they have six tracks across the state. 
Even these are hardly enough, for every year the great 
West has more people, raises more grain to ship to 
eastern cities and to Europe, and requires more goods 
from mills and factories along the Atlantic coast. 

There are many local trains that run between New 
York and Albany, or Albany and Syracuse, or Syra- 
cuse and Buffalo. These are convenient for the smaller 
towns and cities. Then there are many through trains 
whose destination is Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago, Indian- 
apolis, or St. Louis. Quickly changing cars at lake 
Michigan or the Mississippi river, the traveler is hurried 
on to the Rocky mountains, the Pacific ocean, Alaska, 
or the lands of Asia or Australia across the sea. 

The New York Central is not the only great road that 
runs westward through the state. The Erie road was 
built through the southern counties from New York to 
lake Erie, partly because the townships through which 
it runs were jealous of the privileges which the great 
canal gave to the people farther north. The Delaware, 
Lackawanna and Western also comes from New York 
through the coal region of Pennsylvania, and runs near 
the Erie road to Buffalo. 

The larger cities and the greater number of towns are, 
however, along the Central Railway. Going up the 
Hudson and the Mohawk, the traveler will hardly pass 
one busy town before he is in sight of another. When 
he looks across the river and sees Newburg he will 
remember that in a plain old house in that city General 
Washington had his headquarters. When he comes in 
sight of Albany he will see the great Capitol building 



THE NEW YORK CENTRAL RAILWAY 6l 

Standing high over all others. At Schenectady he will 
think of Arent Van Curler and the old boatmen and 
the dreadful French and Indian massacre. At Utica 
he will pass, the ford w^here thousands waded the river 
as they went to the wilderness. At Rome he will be 
reminded of the famous carry of Fort Stanwix, of St. 
Leger, and of the heroes w'ho drove him back to the 
north. At Syracuse he will ride through miles of closely 
built streets, and as he leaves the city on the west he will 
see ancient vats with low sliding roofs. In these vats 
countless bushels of salt have been made, as the sun has 
slowly drawn off the water of the brine in vapor. There 
were buildings, too, with chimneys and great boilers for 
making salt ; but in the main the city has other inter- 
ests now. It has mills and large stores, and is a railway 
center. 

At Rochester our traveler crosses the Genesee, and 
remembers the hardy pioneer who left comfortable old 
Hagerstown to build a city in the swamp and forest. 
Colonel Rochester could have had no idea of the fine 
city he was starting, or of the orchards, nurseries, and 
wheat fields that would be around it, but he lived long 
enough to see the flour mills at the falls doing a thriving 
business. Thus wheat and flour made Rochester as salt 
made Syracuse, and first the canal and then the great 
railway took these useful things to market. 

An hour or two more and the train pulls into Buffalo, 
the second city of New York, looking on the lake and 
stretching out its hands to the great world of inland sea 
and prairie. To Buffalo come coal and iron and meat 
and wheat and corn. Here great elevators receive grain 



62 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

from the ships and load canal boats and railway cars for 
the east. Here some of the New York Central trains 
turn north and go by Niagara through Canada to the 
west, while others pass off to the south and west and 
go to Cleveland, Toledo, and Chicago. Since the day 
when the two kegs were filled with w^ater from lake 
Erie, Buffalo has become a large city, a gateway of the 
East and West. And since the De Witt Clinton train 
crept from Albany to Schenectady, the New York Central 
Railway has become great also, for every day hundreds 
of trains of goods and men are coming and going between 
the Lakes and the city by the sea. 



CHAPTER VI 

OLD JOURNEYS FROM PHILADELPHIA TO 
THE WEST 

The people of New York City like to say that Phila- 
delphia is slow, and would almost make one think that 
all the men there wear Quaker hats and act like William 
Penn. The citizens of Philadelphia, however, are not much 
troubled by this, for they have a great and busy city, 
and they like to remind the men of New York that Phila- 
delphia is a " city of homes," and that the people do not 
live in great tenement houses nor do all their business 
in "sky scrapers." The Liberty Bell hangs there, the 
Continental Congress sat there, and the home of the 
federal government was there before it was in Washing- 
ton. For a long time the Quaker City was the metropo- 
lis of America, but as New York and Baltimore grew 
they took away some of the trade that otherwise would 
have gone to the city on the Delaware. It also ceased 
to be the capital of the nation and thus had to depend 
more on its shipping and inland business. Now to do 
much inland business it was necessary not only to reach 
the rich lowlands at hand but also to send out across the 
mountains. This could not be done without roads. 

When men went from New York City across the 
mountains they found the Great Lakes and the rich 

63 



64 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

plains on their shores. So Philadelphia, looking over her 
mountain wall, saw the noble valley of the Ohio river 
and the young Pittsburg at its gateway. As New York 
found a route to the West, so Philadelphia sought out 
its highways to the country beyond the Appalachian 
mountains. In this chapter and the next we shall see 
where these highways ran. 

The first roads were little like those of to-day, and the 
stage drivers had to be steady, cool-headed men. There 
were many stumps and logs in what was called a road, 
and the teams were guided less by reins than by shouts 
in a kind of language which the horses understood. A 
traveler between Philadelphia and Washington said that 
often the driver would call to the passengers to lean 
out of the carriage on one side or the other, so that 
their weight might keep the balance even. He would 
say, ''Now, gentlemen, to the right!" and the men 
would lean out as far as they could ; or, '' Now, gentle- 
men, to the left ! " and over they would swing to the 
other side. 

It took strong wagons to travel such roads, and some- 
times the wheels w^ere cut solid by sawing off short sec- 
tions of the butt of a great tree, much as the wheels 
of a toy cart have been made by many boys. When a 
driver was stuck in the mud he had to wait for other 
teams to come up, when they would hook on with him 
and drag him out upon hard ground again. They were 
a rough but sociable company, the teamsters of those 
days, feeding their horses and cracking their jokes at 
the taverns which lined the turnpikes. They would 
stand by one another loyally, but when they met some 



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H 



OLD JOURNEYS FROM PHILADELPHIA 65 

fine gentleman on the road they did not object to taking 
off a wheel or crushing the frame of his light carriage. 

Out of West Philadelphia to-day leads a street known 
as Lancaster avenue. It is the eastern end of the old 
" Lancaster pike," the town which gave name to the 
road being sixty-six miles to the west. This is the oldest 
turnpike road in the United States. When the pioneers 







Fig. 21. Penn Square, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, looking 
East along the " Lancaster Pike" 



were clearing up the forests and building the Genesee 
road in New York this region was already well settled. 
If you ride from Philadelphia to Lancaster to-day, you 
will see that it is an old country, and you will not think 
it strange when you learn that so long ago as 1730, two 
years before the birth of Washington, some of the inhab- 
itants were moving out beyond Lancaster. This means 



66 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

that they went west of the Susquehanna, for Lancaster 
is only about twelve miles east of that great river. 

Many of the earlier settlers of this lowland region 
west of Philadelphia were Germans. William Penn had 
invited some of these people to come, and they had set- 
'tled near by in the place now known as Germantown. 
In time many others settled both around Lancaster 
and farther west. Hence we hear of " Pennsylvania 
Dutch," although they were not really Dutch, which is 
a term belonging rather to Hollanders and their descend- 
ants. There were also some Scotch-Irish, as they were 
called, — descendants of Scotch people who had migrated 
to the north of Ireland, whence their children had come 
to America. These were Presbyterians, and some of them 
had settled in New Jersey, where they founded Prince- 
ton College. 

The country between Philadelphia and the Susque- 
hanna is one of the richest and most fertile regions in 
the world. Most of it is low, with gently rolling fields 
and a few higher hills. One fine farm joins another, and 
the great stone houses look as strong and as solid as if 
they had grown up out of the ground. Huge chimneys 
rise from the roofs and make one think of the warm 
fire-places and well-spread tables of the thrifty German 
farmers who built these houses and lived in them. The 
barns, like the houses, are large ; they are often built of 
stone and whitewashed, and they still hold great harvests. 
One side of the barn usually reaches several feet beyond 
the high foundation, and is called an " overshoot." As the 
doors to the stables are under this, it seems to have been 
planned as a protection against storms. 



OLD JOURNEYS FROM PHILADELPHIA 6/ 

An English traveler went over the Lancaster pike in 
1796 and found it worthy of praise. He said that it 
was paved with stone, covered with gravel, and could 
be traversed in any season of the year. About one mile 
east of the public square in Lancaster a fine old arched 
bridge of stone carries the turnpike across Conestoga 
creek, a stream flowing southward into the Susquehanna. 





'a it^ 


^^ 




^^^^^^^^^^^^^^WBg^PJgr^ ''■ rii"~"'^^ ^'^■»»^" '•■■• ^— -^ 




^^^^K ■'3B^L. 1 




m 






^ 


^ 



Fig. 22. Bridge on the " Pike " crossing Conestoga Creek One 
Mile East of Penn Square, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 



It takes its name, which has become famous in American 
history, from a small tribe of Indians who lived on its 
borders. The early inhabitants made the water deeper 
by building dams with locks, and sailed their boats with 
loads of produce down to the Susquehanna. In the com- 
mon phrase of that time, they spoke of it as the " Cones- 



toga navigation. 



But the most interesting thing to which the name 
Conestoga was given was a wagon that was invented in 



6S 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



this region. It was made very large and strong, to carry 
freight, and was drawn by four, seven, or even a dozen 
horses. Hundreds of these wagons were to be seen on 
the Lancaster pike and on the other great roads of that 
time. They were built, as freight cars are now, to carry 
heavy loads long distances in safety. 

These wagons were unusually long, and the boxes 
curved upward at the ends, so that inside and out they 




Fig. 23. Tollhouse Eight Miles Fast of Lancaster, 
Pennsylvania 



were shaped somewhat like a canoe. The advantage of 
this was that the loads did not slide, but rode steadily 
when the wagons went up and down steep hills. The 
wheels were big and had wide tires, so that the heavy 
loads would not cut the roads. The story is told that 
one of these wagons with its load of tobacco weighed 
more than thirteen thousand pounds, or almost seven 
tons. 



OLD JOURNEYS FROM PHILADELPHIA 69 

They were painted red and blue, and were eovered 
with a canopy of cloth, so that they looked like the 
" })rairie schooners" which in later days were the emi- 
grant wagons of the western plains. Each wagon had a 
tool box fastened at the side, and a tar bucket and a 
water pail hung beneath. The horses were well fed, well 
matched, and strong, with good harnesses and many 
jingling bells. The drivers were rough-and-ready men, 
who snapped their whips in the daytime, told stories in 
the evening, and slept at night on little mattresses of 
their own in front of the barroom fire. 

Hundreds of these wagons were going and coming on 
the roads in the days when people were not dreaming of 
freight trains, and no doubt the Conestoga seemed as 
important then as the chief freight lines now appear 
to us. In the French and Indian War, when there was 
great need of wagons to carry Braddock's stores, Benjamin 
Franklin was asked to get some of these famous convey- 
ances. He succeeded, for many were to be found in this 
part of Pennsylvania, and he sent on more than one 
hundred and fifty of them. He nearly lost his fortune 
in consequence, for he told the farmers he would see 
that they were paid if the wagons and horses were 
not returned. It cost the old patriot twenty thousand 
pounds, but fortunately the government afterwards paid 
the money back to him. Not long ago the writer saw 
one of these wagons, with a boat-shaped box, but without 
a canopy, in use on a farm near Lancaster. 

Following the pike westward for twelve miles from 
Lancaster, the traveler crosses the Susquehanna- -river 
at Columbia. The old bridge was destroyed long ago. 



70 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



but the present one, although it looks new, is hardly 
used in a modern way. It is narrow, with a plank floor, 
and it serves for railway trains and wagons, as well as 
for foot passengers. There is no separate place for any 
of these, so when a train or wagon goes on at either 
end a telegram is sent to the other end to keep cars 
and carriages from entering the bridge there. 




Fig. 24. Hambright's Hotel, on the '• Pike," Three Miles 
West of Lancaster, Pennsylvania 



Along the "Pike" is an electric road, which carries 
people more swiftly and doubtless with less dust and jolt- 
ing than did the old stages. Hambright's Hotel, shown 
in the picture above, is on this road, and, with its big 
chimneys and high, long-handled pump, shows how many 
of the ancient hotels looked. They seem lonely enough 
now, but they were gay and busy places then. It is very 
appropriate that the company which runs all the street 
cars in and about Lancaster calls itself The Conestoga 
Traction Company. 



OLD JOURNEYS FROM PHILADELPHIA 71 

Westward from the Susquehanna, in what we sliall 
know in a later chapter as the Great Valley, are some 
comfortable old towns bearini; the names of Carlisle, 
Shippensburg, and Chambersburg. The pike passes 
through these and on to the old town of Bedford. Then 
it enters a high, rough strip of land that was covered 
with forest long after Philadelphia had become a city 




Fig. 25. Old Road House, One Mile West of Chambersburg, 

Pennsylvania 

and the farmers about Lancaster had built their great 
houses and barns. At the other end of this wilderness 
was Pittsburg. The road from Bedford to Pittsburg was 
cut through the woods in 1758, in the time of the French 
and Indian wars, and is sometimes called Forbes's road, 
from the general who directed the making of it. It was 
used in the time of the Revolution, and many forts were 
built to guard it. 

This roadway was so important that the Pennsylvania 
government, a few years after the Revolutionary War, 



72 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

took it in hand and improved it. Thus there was a Une 
of travel over the older highway to Lancaster and Bed- 
ford, and thence over the newer road to Pittsburg. The 
whole road led from the seaboard to the Ohio river and 
was often called the Pittsburg pike. 

We have now learned of two great, well-trodden routes 
from east to west, — the route of the Hudson and the 
Mohawk through New York, and the route through 
the southern parts of Pennsylvania from Philadelphia 
to Pittsburg. 

In laying out such roads the pioneers almost always 
followed trails that the Indians had made. For long- 
generations the red men had followed the same paths, 
beating them smooth and deep in the forest earth. The 
white men widened the trail by using pack horses, load- 
ing the beasts well with all sorts of things. The next 
step was to cut away trees, take out the stones, and make 
roads for wagons. Carrying by pack horses, however, 
had become a great business, and the horse owners 
were very angry when the wagons began to take away 
their trade. 

In 1830 a Pennsylvania citizen, then nearly a hundred 
years old, told of seeing the first wagon reach Carlisle, 
and he remembered how furious the "packers" were 
because they feared that they would lose their business. 
It did not occur to them that they could harness their 
horses into teams, buy strong wagons, and be ready to 
make money in the new way instead of the old. The 
horse owners were quite as angry about stagecoaches, 
and they sometimes destroyed the coaches and injured 
the passengers to vent their spite. Moreover, as people 



OLD JOURNEYS FROM PHILADELPHIA 73 

often like an excuse for doing wrong, and for harboring 
mean feelings, these men said that the stage business 
was bad for the cloth makers and tailors, because people 
could ride in coaches without spoiling their fine clothes, 
whereas when they rode on horseback they soon ruined 
them and had to buy new ones. Almost any excuse will 
serve those to whom no way seems good except their own; 
Philadelphia now had its connection with Pittsburg 
and the Ohio river and the rich lands bordering it, as 
New York had its way leading to Buffalo and the Great 
Lakes and the prairies. But the southern road crossed 
a rougher country than did the northern one, and so it 
was less easily kept in order and was harder to travel. 
Hence Philadelphia, like New York, sought better means 
of communication with the country on the other side of 
the mountains. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 

A horse railroad had been built from Philadelphia to 
the Susquehanna river, and the big Conestoga wagons 
were running along the pike to Pittsburg ; but this was 
not enough. New York had stirred the whole country 
by its great canal, and the people along the Potomac 
were thinking of similar schemes. Pennsylvania could 
not rest idle, and decided to have a canal of its own. 

In 1826 the ditch was begun at Columbia, where 
the railroad ended, and, following the custom of the 
times, those in charge started the work on Independ- 
ence Day. In four years they had dug the canal, let in 
the water, and were running boats as far as Harrisburg. 

A few miles above Harrisburg the canal turned away 
from the main river and followed its great western branch, 
the Juniata. This river cuts through the high ridges, or 
flows between them as best it can, taking a very winding 
course. The valley is often narrow and its sides are 
steep and rugged. Still it has no heavy grades along the 
bottom, and it led the canal diggers far into the moun- 
tains, to a village called Hollidaysburg. 

Here the highlands are so steep that the canal had to 
stop. The Allegheny PYont is almost fourteen hundred 
feet above Hollidaysburg, and on the other side the 

74 



THE PENNSYLVANIA KAILKCJAD 



75 



Conemaugh river rushes 
swiftly down past the city 
of Johnstown, which is 
seven hunch'cd and sev- 
enty-one feet below the 
s u m m i t . H olliday sburg 
and Johnstown are thirty- 
eight miles apart, and the 
uplands lying between are 
so steep and high that to 
cut through them was out 
of the question. But those 
who were interested in the 
canal were not to be beaten, 
and they kept on digging 
both to the east and to 
the west. Beyond Johns- 
town they carried the 
canal to the Ohio river 
at Pittsburg. 

Meantime the high 
grounds on the divide were 
not neglected. A famous 
road, the Allegheny Port- 
age Railway, was built with 
several inclined planes. 
Stationary engines pulled 
the cars up each slope, 
but on the level parts of 
the road they were drawn 
by horses. 




76 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



The road was not carried to the top, but nearly two 
hundred feet below a tunnel was cut about a mile long. 
The entrance to one end of this tunnel is shown in Fig. 27. 

The two great sections of the canal and the Portage 
Railway were finished in 1835. Goods then went by 




Fig. 27. Entrance to Tunnel, Old Portage Railway 

rail from Philadelphia to Columbia on the Susquehanna 
river. There the boats took them to the east end of the 
Portage road. The next haul was over the Allegheny 
Front, with its lofty forests, to Johnstown. Then the 
boats received the merchandise and landed it in Pitts- 
burg, whence other boats could carry it to any town on 
the Ohio river. 



THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 



77 



The Hit or Miss was one of the boats that came 
up to HoUidaysburg. It was desirable to take this par- 
ticular boat over the heights, so a car was built which 
would fit its keel. The car was dragged up the east side 
of the mountain and down to Johnstown, where the boat 




Fig. 28. Broad Street Station, Philadelphia: Pennsylvania 

Railroad 

was put into the water again and sent off to the Missis- 
sippi river. We can now look across a gorge from the 
coaches of the Pennsylvania Railroad, beyond Altoona, 
and see the grade of the old Portage Railway. 

The canal almost put out of business the Conestoga 
wagons on the dusty pike which had seen so much travel 
by way of Carlisle and Bedford. But the people did not 



78 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

Stop with a canal. Like the men of New York, they 
wanted something even better than that. They wished 
to have a raih'oad all the way, and in 1846 the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad Company was incorporated. By this 
time it was very well known that railroads were success- 
ful both in America and in England, and that steam was 
better than horses. 

Over the Allegheny Front a route was found where 
the grades were not too steep for locomotives. The 
grade, of course, had been the one great hindrance to 
the whole project, and when this difficulty was overcome 
there was no reason why passengers should not be carried 
from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, or a load of iron from 
Pittsburg to Philadelphia, without changing cars. In the 
year 1854 the Pennsylvania people triumphed, for they 
had conquered the mountains and could run trains from 
the banks of the Delaware to the Ohio river. 

If we leave Philadelphia by the great Broad street 
station of the Pennsylvania Railroad, we shall pass out 
among the pleasant homes of West Philadelphia and 
through the fine farms of the Pennsylvania lowlands, 
until we come, in about an hour and a half, to the staid 
old city of Lancaster. We have been here before, to 
learn of turnpikes and Conestoga freighters 

The next stop, if we are on an express train, will be at 
Harrisburg, a little more than a hundred miles from Phila- 
delphia. We have now come from the Delaware to the 
Susquehanna, and are close to the mountains. Before we 
go in among them let us see Harrisburg. It is a city of 
fifty thousand people, and lies along the east bank of the 
Susquehanna, which here is a great river a mile wide, 



THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 



79 



having gathered its tribute of waters from hundreds of 
branching streams in Pennsylvania and New York. 

Not far to the east a small stream runs parallel to 
the main river, and the larger part of Harrisburg is on 
higher ground between the two. On the highest part of 
this ridge is the state capitol, a great building but re- 
cently finished. Harrisburg is at the right point for the 
state government. It is not in the center of the state, 
to be sure, but it is at the rear of the lowlands which 




Fig. 29. Bridge, Pennsylvania Railroad, above Harrisburg 

reach in from the sea, and is just outside the great gate- 
way where roads from all the northern, western, and 
central uplands come out on the plain. It is a convenient 
center for coal and iron, and hence one sees along 
the river below the city many blast furnaces, rolling- 
mills, and factories. To the northeast rich, open lands 
stretch along the base of Blue mountain, and railroads 
join Harrisburg to Reading, Allentown, Bethlehem, and 
Easton. To the southwest bridges cross the Susque- 
hanna, and roads run to Carlisle, Hagerstown, and other 
cities of the Great Valley (Chapter XI). 



8o 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



Thus the Pennsylvania Railroad, running northwest 
from Philadelphia, crosses at Harrisburg other roads 
that run to the southwest. As hamlets often gather 
about "four corners" in the country, so cities grow up 
where the great roads of the world cross each other. 

Leaving Harris- 
burg behind, we pass 
the splendid new 
bridge of the Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad, across 
the Susquehanna (Fig. 
29), and go through 
the gap in Blue moun- 
tain. Soon we turn 
away from the main 
river and enter the 
winding valley of the 
Juniata. The grades 
are easy, the roadbed 
is smooth, and by deep 
cuts through the rocks 
the curves have been 




Fig. 30. Pennsylvania Railroad 
Shops, Altoona 



made less abrupt. It is only when one looks out of the 
car window that the land is found to be rugged and 
mountainous. 

All the greater valleys and ridges of the mountain belt 
of Pennsylvania run northeast and southwest. The last of 
these to be crossed on our journey is Bald Eagle valley, 
from which the Allegheny Front rises to the northwest. 

In this valley, near the place where the Portage Rail- 
way began to scale the heights, and a little more than a 



THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 



8l 



hundred miles from 
Pittsburg, the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad 
Company in 1850 
founded a town and 
called it Altoona. 
Here they started 
shops, which have 
now grown to notable 
importance. The 
town became a city 
eighteen years after 
it was begun, and has 
to-day about forty 
thousand inhabit- 
ants. In the rail- 
way shops alone may 
be found nine thou- 
sand men repairing 
and building locomo- 
tives, passenger 
coaches, and freight 
cars. The Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad Com- 
pany is now found- 
ing a great school in 
Altoona, where 
young men may be 
taught to become 
skillful and efficient 
in railway service. 




82 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

Altoona looks new, and with its endless freight yards, 
its noisy shops, and its sooty cover of smoke from burn- 
ing soft coal, it is very different from quiet Lancaster, 
which was old when forests covered the site of Altoona. 

On our way to Pittsburg we are soon pulling up 
the Allegheny Front by a great loop, or bend, which 
enables the tracks to reach the summit more than a 
thousand feet above Altoona. Nestling within the great 
bend is a reservoir of water to supply the houses and 
shops of the city lying below. Passing the highest point, 
we find ourselves descending the valley of the Cone- 
maugh river to Johnstown, and surrounded by the high 
lands of the Allegheny plateau. 

Johnstown is much older than Altoona, for it was 
settled in 1791, but it has not grown so fast, and has 
only about as many inhabitants as the city of railroad 
shops. Most people know of Johnstown because of the 
flood which ruined the place in 1889. Several miles 
above the town was a reservoir more than two miles 
long and in several places one hundred feet deep. After 
the heavy rains of that spring the dam broke on the last 
day of May, and the wild rush of waters destroyed the 
town. Homes, stores, shops, and mills were torn away 
and carried down the river. Clara Barton of the Red 
Cross, who went to Johnstown as soon as she could get 
there, says that the few houses that were not crushed 
and strewn along the valley were turned upside down. 

More than two thousand men, women, and children 
lost their lives, and those that were left were in mourning 
and poverty. The whole land sent in its gifts of money, 
clothing, and food, and the town was built up again into a 



THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 83 

prosperous city. Near the city are found coal, iron, lime- 
stone, and fire clay, and these things make it easy to estab- 
lish iron works. The Cambria Steel Company gives work 
to ten thousand men in its shops, mines, and furnaces. 

The main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad runs 
down the rugged Conemaugh valley through Johnstown, 
and is its chief means of traffic. As we go on to the 
west we near Pittsburg, but first we pass through a 
number of stirring towns. At one place fire bricks are 
made, and the clay for molding them and the coal for 
burning them are found in the same hill. In another 
town there are coal mines and glass works. Farther 
west the Pennsylvania road has more repair shops, and 
Braddock is the great Carnegie town. We shall see why 
many thriving young cities have grown up in this region 
when we take up Pittsburg, about which they are all 
clustered. 

At Pittsburg we pull into one of the finest railway 
stations in the United States. We may stop in the city 
of coal and iron, or we may go on to the west, over one 
of the main arms of the Pennsylvania Railroad system. 
If we take the northern branch, it will carry us across 
Ohio to Fort Wayne in Indiana and to Chicago. If we 
board a train on the southern arm, we shall go through 
Columbus and Indianapolis, and be set down on the 
farther side of the Mississippi river at St. Louis. 

North and south from the great east and west trunk 
lines run many shorter roads, or ''spurs." On the east 
there is a network of short roads in New Jersey, and one of 
the busiest parts of the whole system is that which joins 
Washington to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. 



84 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



West from Philadelphia for a long distance there are 
four tracks, and on either side may be seen neat hedges, 
such as one finds along the railways of England. In the 
mountains it is often hard to make a roadbed wide 
enough for four tracks, and hence there may be only 




Fig. 32. Rock Cut, along the Line of the Pennsylvania 

Railroad 



three or even two in some places. No doubt four will 
in time be built through to Pittsburg, for many millions 
of dollars are spent in improving the road. Instead of 
having a long circuit around the hills, tunnels and vast 
cuts in the bed rock are made so as to straighten the 
line. Thus both passenger and freight trains are able to 



THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD 85 

make better time, and the road can carry the stores of 
iron and coal which are found in the lands on either side. 

Some of the freij^ht yards are always crowded with 
cars, and at Harrisburg the company is building separate 
tracks around the city, so that through freight trains 
need not be delayed. 

At New York the Pennsylvania Railroad now has its 
station on the New Jersey side of the Hudson river, 
but it is building a tunnel under the river. The com- 
pany has already bought several city blocks and has torn 
away the buildings. Here it will build one of the great- 
est passenger stations in the world. The tunnel will run 
on to the east, under the streets and shops of Man- 
hattan, and under the East river. Thus under New 
York and its surrounding waters trains can go to the 
east end of Long Island. 

Pennsylvania has told us the same story that we 
learned from New York. We read it again : first, how 
the Indian's path was beaten deeper and wider by the 
hoofs of the pack horse, bearing goods to sell and barter 
in the wilderness ; then how strips of forest were cut 
down to make room for the Conestoga wagons and 
the gay stages that swept through from Philadelphia 
to Pittsburg. These in their turn became old-fashioned 
when the canal and Portage Railway were done, and 
now we sit in a car that is like a palace, and think canals 
and Conestogas very old stories indeed. In future gen- 
erations swift air ships may take the wonder away from 
the Empire State Express, and make us listen unmoved 
when a man, standing in the station at Philadelphia, calls 
the limited train for Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE NATIONAL ROAD 

The sea reaches inland ahiiost to the northeast corner 
of the state of Maryland. This long, wide arm of the 
ocean receives many rivers and is known as Chesapeake 
bay. Near its north end is Baltimore, one of the four 
great cities of our Atlantic coast. It is one hundred 
and fifty miles from the open sea. If, instead of sailing 
up the bay, we should turn toward the west, we could 
go up the Potomac river, which is deep and wide. On 
our way we should pass Washington's estates at Mount 
Vernon, the old city of Alexandria, and the national 
capital, Washington. We could not sail much farther 
because there are falls in the Potomac which ships can- 
not pass. The Potomac runs so close to Chesapeake 
bay that it is only forty miles from Washington across 
to Baltimore. 

Chesapeake bay is much like Delaware bay and the 
tidal Hudson river, only it is larger than either. Balti- 
more is at a greater distance from the open sea than 
Philadelphia is, and Philadelphia is farther inland than 
New York, but each of these cities tried to get as much 
of the western trade as it could. 

The natural way for the men of Baltimore and Alex- 
andria to go across to the west was up the Potomac 

86 



THE NATIONAL KOAU 



87 



river and through its passes in the mountains, l^ut 
before they tried this they had settled much of the low, 
flat land along the Potomac and about the Chesapeake 
in Virginia and Maryland. This was often called "tide- 
water country," because the beds of the rivers are below 
sea level, and the streams are deep enough for boats of 
some size. 

When the land was first settled and the colonists 
found that they could go almost everywhere by boat, 




Fig. ;^2- Tollhouse West of Brownsville, Pennsylvania 

they paid small heed to making roads. They could visit 
their neighbors on other plantations and they could load 
their tobacco and take it to market by the rivers. Many 
plantations were beside rivers of such great depth that 
sailing vessels bound for London could come up to the 
farmer's wharf and get his crop of tobacco. 

In early days the members of the legislature were not 
always given so much per mile to pay the stage fares 
between their homes and the capital, but they were 



88 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

allowed the cost of hiring boats instead. Many ferries 
were needed, and laws about them were made before 
rules were laid down for bridges and roads. Several 
lawmakers at one time would have been fined for their 
absence from the legislature of the colony had they not 
been excused because there was no ferry to carry them 
over the river which they would have had to cross. 

Around Annapolis ''rolling roads " were made. These 
were wide paths made as smooth as possible, in order 
that large hogsheads of tobacco might be rolled, each by 
two men, to the market in that old town. 

After a time the lowlands of the coast region began 
to fill up and the people were pushing westward, just as 
they did in Pennsylvania and New York. No man had 
so great a part in this westward movement as the young 
surveyor, George Washington. In 1748 he was sixteen 
years old, a tall, strong lad, full of courage and energy. 
Lord William Fairfax, a rich English gentleman who 
had settled in Virginia, had bought great tracts of forest 
land up the Potomac behind the Blue Ridge mountains, 
and he was eager to have them surveyed. Knowing 
that Washington had studied surveying, Fairfax asked 
him to undertake the task. The boy consented ; he went 
beyond the Blue Ridge into the country along the Shen- 
andoah, camped in the woods, swam the rivers, tough- 
ened his muscles, learned the ways of the red men, and 
three years later came back, a grown man, ready for 
great things. 

While Washington was getting his practice as a sur- 
veyor the Ohio Company was formed to take up lands 
along the Ohio river, and to keep the French from 



THE NATIONAL ROAD 89 

settling there. Lawrence, Washington's elder brother, was 
one of the chief men of this company. In 1753 Wash- 
ington himself went west to the Ohio river. Day by day 
the French were taking a firmer hold of that country, 
and Dinwiddie, the old Scottish governor of Virginia, 
looked about for some one to carry a warning letter to 
the commander of one of their new forts. The messenger 
was also to keep his eyes open and report what the 
French were doing on the upper waters of the Ohio. 
He chose Washington, saying, '' Faith, you 're a brave 
lad, and, if you play your cards well, you shall have no 
cause to repent your bargain." Washington did not wait, 
but left on the day he received his commission, late 
in October, 1753. 

Christopher Gist, a famous frontiersman, was secured 
as guide, and we can have no doubt that he and Washing- 
ton formed a team, ready to meet Frenchmen, red men, 
and the dangers of river and forest. They made up their 
little party where the city of Cumberland, Maryland, now 
stands. It is far up the Potomac, in the heart of the 
mountains, — a long way beyond the Blue Ridge and 
the lands where Washington had been surveying. 

At this place a large stream called Wills creek cuts 
through one of the mountain ridges by a deep gorge 
and enters the Potomac. On a hill, where these streams 
come together, was Fort Cumberland, the great outpost 
of Virginia and Maryland. A fine church now stands on 
the ground of the old fort, in the heart of the busy city 
of Cumberland. This was the starting point for Wash- 
ington's expedition and for many later ones into the 
western wilderness. 



90 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



Washington made his dangerous journey with success. 
He brought back a letter from the French commander, 
but of much greater value was the story of all that he 
had seen. The colonists now knew just what they would 
have to do to keep possession of the Ohio lands. 

It was not long before Washington went again as com- 
manding officer of a small army, and in 1755 he served 
under General Braddock in the famous battle which 

resulted in the defeat 
of the English and the 
death of their general. 
Washington, as we 
know, brought off the 
troops with honor to 
himself. In each of 
these expeditions 
something was done 
toward cutting away 
the trees and grading 
a road from Fort Cum- 
berland to the head 
of the Ohio river at 
Pittsburg. 

On the line of Brad- 
dock's road, a dozen 
miles west of Cumberland, is a milestone, set up about a 
hundred and fifty years ago. A photograph of it is shown 
above. It is a rough brown stone, standing in a pasture 
half a mile outside the city of Frostburg, in western 
Maryland. The stone was once taken away and broken, 
but it has since been set up again and cemented into 




Fig. 34. Milestone on the Line of 
Braddock's Road, near Frostburg, 
Maryland 



THE NATIONAL ROAD 



91 



a base of concrete. The view shows how it has been 
spUt up and clown. On one side are directions, and on 
the other are the words, '' Our Country's Rights We 
Will Defend." 

Braddock's journey from Alexandria to Fort Duquesne 
was an uncomfortable one, to say nothing of its disastrous 
end. He bought a carriage to ride in, but the road was 
not suited to a coach, as were the roads he knew in old 
England. Beyond Cumberland, especially, in spite of all 
the work his men could do upon it, it was so bad that 
he was forced to take Washington's advice and change 
the baggage from wagons to pack horses. 

Gradually, as time went on, these rough paths were 
beaten down into smoother thoroughfares. The same 
causes that led to the development of the North were 
working also at the South. Along the Potomac, as in 
New York and in Pennsylvania, the stream of colonial 
life flow^ed westward. First the pioneers settled the low- 
lands around Chesapeake bay and along the deep rivers; 
then as their strength and courage reached beyond the 
mountains they found the forests and fertile soil behind 
the Blue Ridge. Farther within the rugged highlands 
they built P'ort Cumberland and sent out discoverers and 
armies to the Ohio river. When the woods were cleared 
and towns and states grew up on the Ohio, there was 
frequent occasion to cross the mountains for trade, for 
travel, and to reach the seat of government, which in 
1 80 1 was moved to Washington on the Potomac. 

These glimpses of colonial journeys will help us to 
understand why the National Road came to be built. 
About one hundred years ago the government began to 



92 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



take a great interest in opening roads, especially across 
the Appalachian mountains, to Ohio, Kentucky, and other 
parts of the Mississippi valley. Washington, who died in 
1 799, had said much about this work, for he not only wanted 
western trade to come to Virginia instead of going to New 
Orleans, but he also felt that so long as the mountains kept 
the East and the West apart we should never have one 
common country, held together by friendly feelings. 




Fig. 35. Old Road House, Brownsville, Pennsylvania 

The people of Baltimore, like those of New York and 
Philadelphia, were eager to have the best road to the 
West, that their business might be benefited. Not far 
from Baltimore is an old place called Joppa, and several 
roads are still known as *' Joppa roads." The town is 
older than Baltimore and was once the chief trading 
town in the northern part of Maryland ; but Baltimore 
was well situated on an arm of the great bay, and by 
this time had gone far ahead of its old rival. 



THE NATIONAL ROAD 93 

A number of good roads had been built in Maryland, 
among them a famous one leading out westward to Fred- 
erick. This was in the direction of Hagerstown, and still 
farther west was Cumberland. The United States gov- 
ernment decided to build a great road to Ohio, beginning 
at Cumberland. To get the benefit of this, the men of 
Baltimore went to work to push the Frederick pike west- 
ward to the beginning of the National Road. 

So it came about in 1 8 1 1 that the first contracts were 
let for building parts of the National Road. We remem- 
ber that the Erie canal was not started until six years 
later. The act of Congress which ordered the making of 
the road provided that a strip four rods wide should be 
cleared of trees, that it should be built up in the middle 
with broken stone, gravel, or other material good for 
roads, and that all steep slopes should be avoided. The 
road was opened to the public in 1 8 1 8, one year after the 
Erie canal was begun. The original plan was to make it 
seven hundred miles long, reaching from Cumberland to 
the Mississippi river, but it was never carried out. 

The Maryland roads, as we have seen, ran west from 
Baltimore and Washington to Frederick, east of the Blue 
Ridge ; to Hagerstown, in the Great Valley ; and to Cum- 
berland, in the mountains. Cumberland is a stirring 
town of about twenty thousand people, and with its 
great business in coal, iron, and railroads it seems like 
a larger city. Thence the National Road runs through 
the gap in Wills mountain (Fig. 36) to Frostburg, a dozen 
miles west and fifteen hundred feet higher. The road 
soon bears northward into Pennsylvania and crosses 
the Monon^ahela river at Brownsville, about forty miles 



94 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

south of Pittsburg. Coal is mined here, and boats were 
running in those early days, as coal barges and steam- 
boats run to-day, down to the great iron city. 

From Brownsville the pike leads over the hills and 
comes down to the Ohio river at Wheeling, West Virginia. 
It then passes on through Ohio, touching Columbus, the 
capital, on the way to Indiana and the Mississippi. 

We sometimes admire the cars marked with the sign 
of the United States post office, which we see drawn 
by a swift locomotive at a speed of sixty miles an hour ; 
but when the government put its mail coaches on the 
National Road from Washington to Wheeling, no doubt 
they seemed quite as wonderful to the people of that 
time. And it was only twenty-five years since the people 
of Utica had thought it so remarkable that six letters 
had come to them in one mail ! Soon passenger coaches 
were rushing along at ten miles an hour, and sometimes 
even faster. There were canvas-covered freight wagons, 
each of which carried ten tons, had rear wheels ten feet 
high, and was drawn by twelve horses. In those days 
life was full of stirring interest on the National Road. 

There were rates of toll for all sorts of animals and 
wagons. The toll was higher for hogs than for sheep, 
and more was charged for cattle than for hogs. If the 
wagons had very wide tires, no toll was demanded. 
Drivers sometimes lied about the number of people in 
their stages, so as to pay less toll. The stages were not 
owned by the drivers but by companies, which bid for 
travelers and freight, as railways do now. There were 
penalties for injuring milestones or defacing bridges, 
showing that some people then were like some people 




95 



96 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



now. The companies had interesting names. There were 
the ''Good Intent," "Ohio National Stage Lines," the 
''Pilot," "Pioneer," "June Bug," and "Defiance." Not 
one of them cared for mud or dust, for horses or men, 
if only it could be the first to reach its destination. 




Fig, 37. Bridge and Monument, National Road, near 
Wheeling, West Virginia 



There must have been dust enough, for twenty coaches 
with their many horses sometimes followed one another 
in a close line. 

Henry Clay was one of the chief advocates of this 
road, and a monument built in his honor may be seen 
near the bridge, shown in Fig. 37. It is a few miles east 
of Wheeling. At Brownsville a small stream called Dun- 
lap's creek flows into the Monongahela from the east. 
Over it is an iron bridge on the line of the National 
Road. According to a story told in Brownsville, Henry 
Clay was once overturned as he was riding through 
the creek before the bridge was built. As he gathered 



THE NATIONAL ROAD 



97 



himself up he was heard to say, "Clay and mud shall 
not be mixed here again." The story goes that he went 
on immediately to Washington and got an order for the 
building of the bridge. 

Whether this be true or not, it is certain that he and 
many other statesmen traveled over the National Road. 
They could not have private cars, nor did they go in 
drawing-room coaches, as we can if we choose. Anybody 
might chance to sit beside these men of national fame, 
as day after day they rode through the valleys and over 
the mountains, stopping at the wayside hotels for food 
and rest. 

Some of the old hotels, tollhouses, and bridges, as they 
look to-day, are shown in the illustrations in this chapter. 
The road itself was long ago given up to the different 
states and counties through which it runs, but it still 
tells to the traveler who goes over it many a story of the 
life of a hundred years ago. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD 

Even after the Erie canal was built and long lines of 
boats were carrying the grain and other products of the 
West to New York, the men of Virginia and Maryland 
did not give up the notion of still making the trade of 
the western country come their way. They planned the 
Chesapeake and Ohio canal, to reach the Ohio river, and 
thought that other canals across the state of Ohio would 
let them into lake Erie. By the Ohio river they would 
connect with New Orleans and the upper Mississippi 
river, and through lake Erie they could reach the towns 
and farms that border lake Huron, lake Michigan, and 
lake Superior. 

A canal along the Potomac valley had been talked of 
several years before the Revolution, when Richard Henry 
Lee laid a plan for it before the Assembly of Virginia. 
Doubtless others thought of it too, as of the Erie canal, 
long before it was made. At the end of the War of 
the Revolution W^ashington made a long journey into the 
wild woods of New York. He went to the source of the 
Susquehanna at Otsego lake, visited the portage between 
the Mohawk and Wood creek, and saw for himself that 
New York had a great chance for navigation and trade. 
But he had a natural love for his own Virginia, and he 

98 



THE BALTIMORE AND OHIO KAILKUAD 



99 



did not intend to let New York l;o ahead of his native 
state. His journeys across the mountains as a surveyor 
and as a soldier gave him a knowledge of the Ohio 
country, and as he had himself taken up much good land 
there, he wished to have an easy way, by land or water, 
from the sea to the rich Ohio valley. So he thought 
much about a canal to run by the side of the Potomac, 
and he joined with others who felt as he chd to form the 




Fui. 38. Mount Royal Station, Baltimork and Ohio Kail- 
road, Baltimore 

Potomac Company. They started a canal, but they found 
so mucli in the way that the)' were not able to go far 
with it. 

The plan for a canal came up again twenty )ears after 
Washington died, and in 1823 a charter was given for 
building the Chesapeake and Ohio canal. New York had 
then been six years at work on the Erie canal and would 
finish it in two years more. If the Virginia and Mary- 
land people had known that most of them would be dead 



lOO 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



before their canal was half done, and that it would never 
be really finished, they would not have undertaken it. 

They did not begin the work until five years later, in 
1828. Then a great crowd came together at George- 
town, now a part of Washington, on the Potomac, to see 
the first earth thrown out. President John Quincy 




Fig. 39. Chesapeake and Ohio CaxNal, Cumberland 



to begin the digging 
not go into the soil. 



Adams made the principal speech and then took a spade 

The spade hit a root and would 
The President set down his foot 
more firmly, but still the spade would not move. At 
last, determined to succeed, he pulled off his coat for 
the job. The crowd liked this and cheered loudly, while 
Mr. Adams accomplished what he had set out to do. 



THE BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD lOl 

On this very day something else was going on at 
Baltimore, forty miles away. Baltimore was not on the 
Potomac, but her people did not propose to be left out of 
the western trade on that account. After much disput- 
ing a charter had been granted for building what became 
one of the most famous, as it is one of the oldest, Amer- 
ican railways, — the Baltimore and Ohio. Hence Balti- 
more had a celebration of her own on this same Fourth 
of July, 1828. 

They did not have the President of the United States 
to help them, but they fared very well. They had great 
faith in what they were doing, and doubtless would have 
shouted even louder had they known what a great rail- 
road they were starting and what a hard time the canal 
people would have. 

There was only one man remaining of all the patriots 
who had signed the Declaration of Independence almost 
fifty years before. This was Charles Carroll of Carroll- 
ton, and he was the guest of Baltimore on that day. A 
prayer was offered, the Declaration was read, and after an 
officer of the railway company had spoken Mr. Carroll 
removed the first earth. As if nature would be kind to 
an old man, no root made his work hard ; and the super- 
stitious may say that the President's toilsome digging 
over in Georgetown was a bad omen for that enterprise. 
It is easier to look back than to see into the future. 

Both canal and railway went on building, but as they 
needed nearly the same route in some places, they did 
not get on well together. The canal was located in the 
state of Maryland, along the north bank of the Potomac. 
This was done in some measure because a large part of 



102 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

the water which would be needed for the canal came 
down from the uplands on the north side. It took twenty- 
three years to dig the trench as far as Cumberland, so 
that it was 185 1 before boats could run between Cumber- 
land and tide water. The original plan of carrying the 
canal beyond Cumberland and across the mountains was 
never carried out. 

Just below the point where Wills creek enters the 
Potomac there is a dam, and from the pond so made the 
water is taken into the upper end of the canal. Much 
traffic has passed up and down the canal, but, on the 
whole, it has not paid for the cost of building and repair- 
ing. Sometimes it has been out of use, and a few months 
ago the state of Maryland sold it for a small sum to 
the Wabash Railway Company. 

The NortJi American Review has been published for 
a long time. At least seventy-five years ago this maga- 
zine printed two articles on the Baltimore and Ohio Rail- 
road. By reading them we can see how the intelligent 
people of that time felt about building it. 

In favor of the proposed railroad they said, first, that 
it would not be closed by ice for several months each 
year, as the Erie canal and the rivers were. Secondly, 
they reminded the public that Baltimore is two hundred 
miles nearer the Ohio navigation than New York is, and 
one hundred miles nearer than Philadelphia. Thirdly, 
they argued that New Orleans was a long way off, and 
its climate hot and unhealthful. Provisions sent by that 
route would be likely to spoil, and the traders taking the 
goods down the river might fall sick. Further, the rivers 
in a dry summer would be too low for navigation. 




Fig. 40. Highest Point on Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 

AT Sand Patch, Pennsylvania 

103 



104 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

Nor did Baltimore people think that the Erie canal 
could get much trade except from regions close to lake 
Erie, and they had noticed that lands not far from the 
canal still sent a good deal of produce down the Susque- 
hanna river to Baltimore. There was no port south of 
them that was so good as theirs ; in short, they showed 
a very proper pride in their own home and a conviction 
that Baltimore was as good as any other American city, 
if not, perhaps, a little better. 

They said also that the lime used for building in the 
city of Washington was brought all the way from Rhode 
Island, while there was a great abundance of good lime- 
stone in their own mountains, although it could not be 
carried by wagons. There was coal also, in seams so 
thick and wide that it could never be used up, but there 
was no way of getting it down to the sea where it would 
run factories, smelt iron, and propel the new steamships 
that so soon would make the ocean a well-traveled high- 
way. Slate also was to be had, and marble, and gypsum, 
and timber, but these could not be brought to the towns 
where they might be used. There was, moreover, much 
iron ore all along the proposed route, and we all know 
that iron is the most important of the metals. 

;-^t had long before been learned that there were many 
fish in Chesapeake bay, and that New England was not 
to have the fishing business all to herself. Better even 
than this, there were then, as there are now, places under 
the shallow waters where countless oysters lived and mul- 
tiplied. It was said, even in 1827, that if there could be 
a railroad to carry things quickly, oysters might be sent 
to people living far from the sea. 



THE BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD 105 

Baltimore's notion of swift carrying was much like 
that of the Erie canal packet owners. Trains could go 
four miles ah hour, and thus goods might be sent from 
Baltimore to the Ohio river in sixty-two and one-half 
hours. Some hopeful people thought that the speed 
might even be raised to eight miles an hour. When 
cars run at that rate in these days we begin to talk 
about getting out and pushing the engine. 

The builders of the railroad had what seem to us curi- 
ous ideas of laying a foundation for the track. They dug 
a trench in some places, putting into it broken stone, 
and on this they laid long slabs of stone, or '' stone rails." 
On these, in their turn, the iron rails were riveted down. 
Until car springs were invented the jolting must have 
been like that of a farm wagon. 

Even when the track was finished no decision had 
been made as to how the cars w^ere to be moved. Mr. 
Hulbert, in one of his stories of historic highways, tells 
of several experiments which were made. Some one in- 
vented a locomotive in which a horse was to tread an 
endless belt and thus make the machine go, carrying 
with it the horse and dragging the cars. On one trip, 
when several newspaper men w^ere present to report 
the trial, the train ran into a cow and they were all 
tipped out and tumbled down a bank. The method did 
not have much praise in the papers. Sails were also 
tried, and one car w^hich was thus moved by wind was 
called yEohis. This car, with its mast and other ship- 
like rigging, made much talk, but that was all. And no 
one could quite see how it would ever be possible to draw 
a car on a curved track. This meant much, for it was 



lOO 



^^R0^^ TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



out of the question to build a railway through the moun- 
tains without many cur\-es, and some of them rather 
short ones. But there were those who thought that if a 
cur\*ed road were possible, it would be a good thing 
because the engineer could occasionally kx>k back along 
the line and see how his train was coming: on. 




i 



I IG. 4.1. Li>JKING DOWN THE PuTuMAC FRuM HaRPERS FeRRY 



MarylaiMl on the left: West yiiginia on right and in foreground: \'irginia in 
the cfistance; Baltiiiiore and Ohio Raiboad and Chesapeake and Ohio canal 
at the left : Shenandoah river enters under bridge on the right 



But Steam was to win the day. Mr. Peter Cooper had 
a locomotiye, called Tom Thinnb, built in 1829, and an 
old picture shows an exciting race between this little 
engine and a horse car. The steam car won the race, 
and it is now to be seen whether or not electricit) will 
driye steam out of business on the railways. 



i 



THE 



-E AXD OHIO RAILROAD 107 



^ 1^33 1^ z^ zs Harpers Ferri. a 

niijcs ^sid giatts m tbe Cbnl War. 

^: - - "-' sesr tbe spciC miiere tbe 

i>-' - _ . I .'-c 211*1 Oijcli t<i>g?crj^T "bs.ve 

CT_ - - ^jii tbe Eze Raige. T-i^-iav as -i-oe 

- s-"^2i: z^^^rge:. n-e sees tae Doc^e 2i>~ iri^cii- 

r <(:«4 tn-e Bs^iziiire ^"i^ Ohio, srwi tbe crssuDel 

;f the Cbesir<r^Ve 2Jt£ '_»ai:» .^-y^" Fig. 41 . The ts£- 
W2.V tije C3122I, for the rciod was ziiisbed t> 

C- m 184J!- nzTre veais befi're rr^^:-" bjeis 

~ - " - _ iii.i»> tJ!^t c-ZsTe ; aiMi HI 1^53 ^-^^ nrst j '-.-jt^! F^i^^ec. 
ir_i: 'A^-ee^it^. Jh^y liireT. 

-"■-" ; " -^ " ~ i_-z n' gki T»:»«r FLLns i2rt~.«cr n " 

- - : . ~ ^ _ ^ on to ClllC3:^», willl-fr v-f-t 1 

"'-^^T- - _-!_ I . LJTHSalU Slid St T j'iFT::-^ EilStTiSr^" _ '._-; 

: rims Z'j FrilijicCrh^ and st jqs at tbe WMte- 
-"-'" :rr: . il in New Yrni Citv. Tbese k-eg: lilies, with 
'"^'"v ST-ZTS anc skie Imes. T^ir^xe Tip tie B«2-.ttiz?>re a~*c 
O'rl: S^flwav svstcfn. wMch, like the Feimsvhrania asd 
the New Y«:*rk CentniL K»ins tbe sest»rts "X the Atiii!- 
' t the £eJds snd cities of the M255is:3p|s, sisc 
c^kiTtcir ir_ :' 7 direct>xi th-e ri-ch iriii"^::^! pn^docts «-">c 
' terve" ^ ~ 

- - _ ^ . i-ie Atlantic, B^Jtmiore st-^^ - ^ 

-7-2. smd iiisd. The citv was rt — 

: - : r a Mr. Carrofl s*3ki the ja^d !.:««- h 

n::^ an acre. Wliei Washingr«>n zrst Tare^t 
to the O- re were onlv twisitv-6ve booses : 

77 : hi 1770 there were twenr\- thrusaij:: 
r\~ W3LS '~rawmir trarjie . 



io8 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



In 1826, when the Erie canal was building, Baltimore 
had become a city of sixty thousand inhabitants. Now 
it has more than half a million people, and is the sixth 
American city. In foreign trade, however, it stands 
third, and its docks are busy places. The Hamburg- 
American, the North-German Lloyd, and the Red Star 
lines all send regular steamers between Baltimore and 
Europe, and hundreds of others sail to ports on our own 




Fig. 42. Coke Ovens at Meyersdale, Pennsylvania 

coast, to the West Indies, and to South America. Balti- 
more builds ships as well as sails them, to carry the 
corn, flour, and meat of the prairies and the great plains 
to foreign lands, and to bring back their products in 
exchange. Where there are railways and ships there 
are always merchants and factories. Out of the gains 
of trade a Baltimore merchant built one of the most 
famous of our schools, the Johns Hopkins University. 

There has been no more important factor in the 
development of the United States than is found in the 



THE BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD 109 

great railway systems, which, by Unking all sections 
together, give unity and strength to the whole fabric of 
our government. Washington's dreams of his country's 
future are already overtopped by her actual achievements, 
and the most hopeful among those who first saw the 
advantages of steam engines could hardly have looked 
forward to the swift transportation of to-day. 

In the year 1901 an American ship and American rail- 
way trains ran a great race to London over land and sea. 
The start was from Australia and the distance was more 
than thirteen thousand miles. The race was not against 
other ships and other trains, but against time. The mail 
from Sydney in New South Wales usually went by the 
Red sea and the Suez canal, a route which is a thou- 
sand miles shorter than is the Pacific route, and which 
took thirty-five days and a few hours. It happened on 
August 1 3, in the morning, that three hundred and sixty- 
seven sacks of important mail for T.ondon were piled 
on the dock, beside which lay a new American ship, 
the Ventura. Because no good British ship was at hand 
that morning, the post-office authorities thought that 
they would let the vessel with the Stars and Stripes 
carry the mail. She did carry it, and on the evening of 
September 2 she laid down the bags on the pier at 
San Francisco. 

The American railroads tried their hand at carrying 
the British mail. The Southern Pacific took it swiftly 
across to Ogden, in Utah. The Union Pacific seized it, 
two hours late, and said that the time should be made 
up. The train raced a thousand miles to Omaha and 
made up some of the time but not all. Then it was 



no 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



off for Chicago, where the Lake Shore road had a 
"special" ready to overtake the Fast Mail. It ran two 
hundred and forty-four miles in two hundred and sixty- 
five and a half minutes, and did overtake it. Then came 




Fig. 43. The Observation End, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad 

Buffalo, New York, Oueenstown, and London. The car- 
riers in that great city started out with the mail early in 
the morning of September 14. If the bags had come by 
the shorter route under the British flag, they would not 
have reached London until September 16. This is what 
great railways and great ships do in our time, — they 
make neighbors of all men. 



CHAPTER X 

CITIES OF THE OHIO VALLEY 

If we look at a map, we shall see that the Allegheny 
river flows southward from New York into western 
Pennsylvania. The Monongahela river, rising among 
the rough highlands of West Virginia, sends its waters 
toward the north, and the two great streams join to 
form the Ohio, which flows on far to the southwest. All 
together they are like wide-spreading branches of an 
apple tree uniting with the gnarled old trunk. 

In the great crotch of the tree Pittsburg is snugly 
placed. A narrow point of flat land lies between the 
rivers just before they come together to make the Ohio, 
and back of this point, to the east, rise steep hills. 
Across the Allegheny and across the Monongahela the 
banks rise sharply for several hundred feet, and there too, 
wherever the slope is not too steep for houses to stand, 
tens of thousands of busy people have their homes. 

The rivers are crossed by many bridges and are full 
of boats. Up and down for miles their banks are smoky 
and noisy with furnaces, and at night the iron mills 
light up the valley with wonderful torches of flame leap- 
ing into the black sky. If the great towns clustered 
within an hour's ride were counted in, Pittsburg would 
now have a million people. Only a hundred years ago 

III 



I 12 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



she was, like many other cities in the New World, a hum- 
ble village between two rivers. As early as 1730 white 
men journeyed here to trade with the Indians, who could 
come from any part of the western country in their 
canoes. Washington stood here November 24, 1753, 




Fig. 44. Old Blockhouse, Pittsburg 



and in his description of the place wrote, '' I think it 
extremely well situated for a fort, as it has absolute 
command of both rivers." Men were to need forts for a 
long time in that country, and the one which was soon 
built on this site had a stirring history. In 1758 it was 
recaptured from the French and named for England's 



CITIES OF THE OHIO VALLEY 113 

prime minister, Pitt. Hence we have Pittsburgh, which 
is the old spelling, but it is now common to drop the //, 
and write it Pittsburg. 

The old blockhouse of brick, which is still standing, 
was built in 1764. Washington came back to the spot 
in 1770, and found here about twenty houses, used by 
men who w^ere trading with the Indians. Arthur Lee, 
in 1784, thought that the place would ''never be very 
considerable," but he was not a good prophet. In 18 16 
it had become a city and has been steadily gaining in 
importance since that time. Not much more than fifty 
years later an historian of Pittsburg said that if Mr. Lee 
could then come back, he would find a city bigger than 
the six largest cities and towns in the Old Dominion. 

The secret of Pittsburg's success is in its location. 
Many years ago it was called ''the gate of the West," 
and through it has gone much of the trade between the 
East and the lands beyond the mountains. Even from 
New York the pioneers came by land and water to the 
head of the Ohio, an undertaking by no means easy in 
those days. A prominent man in Pittsburg once con- 
tracted with the government to send provisions to Os- 
wego, and as he wished to make the long journey as 
profitable as he could, he packed the provisions in strong 
barrels that would hold salt. When these were emptied 
they were filled for the return trip \vith Onondaga salt 
and carried by lake Ontario to the Niagara river below 
the falls. They were then taken around the falls and 
across the lake to Erie, up French creek, over the 
portage, and at length by boat to Pittsburg. It was a 
roundabout way, but the enterprising dealer sold salt in 



114 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

Pittsburg for half the price charged by the packers who 
brought it by rough mountain roads from the East. 

Improvements in methods of transportation caused an 
increase in business activity. By the Pittsburg pike, by 
the canal with its Portage Railway, and finally by the 
Pennsylvania Railroad, trade was coming from Philadel- 
phia. Not less promptly did the men of Baltimore and 
the Virginians reach Pittsburg by the trail, the National 
Road, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Because 
Pittsburg stood at the head of the Ohio it was a door to 
the whole Mississippi valley, and men and goods quickly 
found their way to it. Once there a boat would take 
them over thousands of miles of river, or to New Orleans 
and the open sea. 

Henry Clay used to tell in Congress a good story 
about Pittsburg. He said that a ship built at Pittsburg 
sailed down the river, through the gulf, across the Atlan- 
tic, into the Mediterranean, and anchored at Leghorn. 
The captain handed his papers to the officer of the cus- 
tomhouse, who did not credit them. "Sir," said he, 
*' your papers are forged ; there is no such port as Pitts- 
burg in the world ; your vessel must be confiscated." 
Though the captain was frightened, he pulled out a map 
and taught the Italian official a lesson in geography, mak- 
ing him understand at last that one could sail a thousand 
miles up the Mississippi and another thousand up the 
Ohio, and that there was such a port as Pittsburg. 

The first boats on the Ohio river were the light bark 
canoes of the red men. These could sail in almost any 
water, but they were easily broken and could carry only 
light loads. When white men began to throng the river 




1^5 



Il6 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

and wanted to carry their families, household furniture, 
tools, grain, and all the produce of the land, they needed 
something larger and stronger. At first they built 
barges, which were little more than great boxes made 
water-tight. These they loaded and steered down the 
stream as best they could. They did not expect to bring 
them back, for such boats could not be pushed against 
the current. Hence the barge builders at Pittsburg 
always had work, for a new one had to be provided for 
each fresh cargo. 

Later men began to make keel boats, in which they 
could not only go downstream but could also, by poling, 
make a return voyage. These boats were about fifty 
feet long and could carry twenty tons or more. Along 
the sides were ''running boards," where the men went 
up and down with their setting poles to drive the boat 
against the current. The space between the running 
boards was covered over to form a kind of cabin. It 
was not an easy task to pole one of these boats up a 
rapid, and the life on the river was a life of toil. 

During the last twenty years before 1800, or while 
Washington was President, a wealthy merchant of Phila- 
delphia took up traffic on the Ohio. He sent dry goods 
and other merchandise overland to Pittsburg, thence 
down the Ohio in a barge, and up the Mississippi to 
Kaskaskia in Illinois, which was at that time an impor- 
tant town. Here the cargo was exchanged for skins of 
bear, deer, buffalo, and other animals, to be taken up 
the Ohio and sent from Pittsburg to Philadelphia. 

It took time to trade in this way. A summer was 
needed to go down to New Orleans and back again with 



CITIES OF THE OHIO VALLEY 



117 



a keel boat or a barge. When a boat came up "with furs 
from St. Louis ; cotton from Natchez ; hemp, tobacco, 
and saltpeter from Maysville; or sugar and cotton from 
New Orleans and Natchez, it was a wonder to the many, 
and drew vast crowds to see and rejoice over it." 

One of the river men, Captain Shreve, once took his 
boat from New Orleans up to Louisville in twenty-five 
days. The people celebrated this remarkable achieve- 
ment and gave the captain a public dinner. No doubt 
they made as much ado as we should now make if a ship 
should go from New York to Liverpool in three days. 
They were quite right to make a feast in honor of the 
occasion, for the time commonly allowed for the journey 
had been three months. 

The flatboat, which for years was used in river traffic, 
was about forty feet long, twelve feet wide, and eight 
feet deep. It had a flat bottom and was handled by 
means of three oars on each side. Two of these were 
called sweeps, and were almost as long as the boat itself. 
At the stern was a still longer steering oar. When the 
water rose in the autumn these boats carried loads of 
produce and bore thousands of families who were seek- 
ing homes farther west. 

Old and young with their household treasures, which 
often included the cow, sailed down in these rude house 
boats to some chosen spot in the distant wilderness. It 
was in a boat like these that the tall and awkward young 
man, Abraham Lincoln, made a voyage to New Orleans 
and first saw something of the outside world. 

Redstone was an old name for Brownsville, where the 
National Eoad crossed the Monongahela, and many 



Il8 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

boats started from here in early days. It is said that an 
old boatman was once hailed by a seeker after informa- 
tion. *' Where are you from ? " was the first question. 
** Redstone," was the answer. "What is your lading ? " 
*' Millstones." " What is your captain's name ? " '' Whet- 
stone." "Where are you bound.?" "For Limestone." 
The interesting part of the story is that these answers 
were all true. 

Large as the traffic was by the flatboats, it was greatly 
increased when steamboats began to run on the rivers. 
No other craft could hope to compete with these. 

The boatmen owed a grudge to the steamboat, just as 
the pack-horse men had hated the Conestoga wagon, for 
they saw that their trade was lost, and it was hard to 
try to make a living in some other way. For many years 
the great passenger boats reigned supreme on the rivers 
of the West, but at last they in turn were forced to give 
way to the railroads. Such boats still run on the Ohio 
and the Mississippi, but men do not travel on them 
when they wish to go quickly. 

Railroad cars, however, do not take the place of some 
boats on the Ohio. Look out on the Monongahela at 
Pittsburg and you may see large fields of boats, — many 
acres of barges, for there are barges on the river still, 
though they do not look like the old ones. They are of 
great size and are sometimes made of steel. The coal, 
taken from the hill out of which it is dug, is run on a 
trestle along the river and dumped into one of these 
boats. At Pittsburg the barges wait for the water to 
rise to a " coal -boat " stage, — that is, until there is a 
depth of at least eight feet all the way down the river. 



CITIES OF THE OHIO VALLEY 



I 19 



Then a number of barges are lashed together and a 
steamboat pushes them down the stream. The water often 
comes up suddenly, and the coal must be rushed to mar- 
ket while the high water lasts. A single towboat some- 
times takes to New Orleans several acres of coal from 
the great Pittsburg coal seam. This lies fiat under the 
hilltops and is mined from the edges where the rivers 




Fig. 46. Coal Barges, Pittsburg 

have cut down through the coal,- far into the beds of 
rock that lie below. 

On the Monongahela the United States owns fifteen 
dams with locks, and the river is thus "slacked" far 
up into West Virginia. The dams change the river into 
a series of long, still ponds, which are deep enough to 
float the coal barges. Below Pittsburg, in the Ohio, is 
another dam which sets the water back and makes a 
harbor for the city. 

There is no coal to send down the Allegheny, but there 
are logs to be rafted, and there is much oil, for the river 



120 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



flows through the petroleum region around Oil City. 
Some of this is taken to refineries at Pittsburg and made 
ready for use. Much natural gas is obtained by boring and 
is used in the city for warming houses and for cooking. 

A cloud of smoke from the soft coal burned in so 
many shops and furnaces hangs over the lower parts of 
Pittsburg and has given it the name of '' The Smoky 



•tP ' ■ '^iPBi?^^ 




• - 
■ 


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^K^ ^ 


*T ' ''♦" ^ ^'Hu 





Fig. 47. Pittsburg at Night 

City." James Parton says that on the first morning of 
his visit there he felt sure that he was rising very early, 
for the street lamps were all burning and he ate his 
breakfast in a room lighted by gas. As the room was 
filled with people, he thought Pittsburg was very enter- 
prising, and himself along with it, but he was quite taken 
aback when he looked at his watch and found that it was 
almost nine o'clock, Darker even than the streets are the 



CITIES OF THE OHIO VALLEY 



121 



"rooms " in which thousands of miners, within a few miles 
of the city, dig out coal with their picks and shovels. 

If one rides into Pittsburg by night, he will see some- 
thing finer than fireworks. The train is likely to whirl 
him past long rows of fiery ovens in which coal is being 
made into coke. And in many towns near by, as well as 




Fig. 48. Furnaces near Pittsburg 



along the rivers by the city itself, the jets of flame will 
show iron furnaces and steel mills, with grimy workmen 
moving about in the strange light. 

The iron ore for these furnaces is brought from many 
parts of the country, but chiefly from the lands around 
lake Superior. It is shipped down the lakes in large 



122 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

Steamers and loaded into cars at Cleveland or some other 
port on lake Erie. Instead of carrying the coal to the 
ore, the ore is thus brought to the coal, without which it 
could not be worked. The reason for this is that Pitts- 
burg is much nearer the places where most of the iron 
is to be used. If the coal of Pennsylvania were taken to 
the iron mines of Minnesota and the furnaces built there, 
much of the iron and steel would have to be carried back 
a long way to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other 
parts of the East. 

Glass mills form an important part of the city's indus- 
tries and have been in operation for a long time. Bottle 
glass is manufactured here, besides three fourths of all 
the plate glass of the United States. Perhaps it is be- 
cause bottles are made in Pittsburg that we find here 
also the largest cork factory in the world. 

Pittsburg is proud of the fact that she handles more 
tons of freight in a year than any other city in the world. 
Indeed, the tonnage is greater than that of New York 
and Chicago taken together. 

The old " point " between the rivers is filled with tall 
buildings. Inclined railways run up the steep bluffs on 
the further side of each river and lead to the beautiful 
streets and the homes where many of the people live. 
For Pittsburg is not all coal and furnaces and smoke, 
but has fine churches, the great Carnegie Library and 
Museum, and many schools. But it is mostly because of 
the coal and the rivers that we find here a splendid city. 

Sixty-three miles down the Ohio river, on its left bank, 
is Wheeling, the largest city in West Virginia. The 
business streets lie close to the Ohio, and the houses 



CITIES OF THE OHIO VALLEY 123 

extend up the steep slope to the east, while over a high 
ridge comes the old National Road from the valley of 
Wheeling creek. Wheeling was the goal of many heavily 
laden wagons in the days of the pike, and because of the 
river and many railroads has a large trade to-day. It 
was settled in 1770 and is one of the oldest towns on 
the river. 

On the north bank of the great stream, in the south- 
west corner of Ohio, is the largest city on the river. As 
late as 1900 Cincinnati had a few thousand more people 
than Pittsburg, but a ''greater Cincinnati " would not be 
so large as a " greater Pittsburg." 

In Cincinnati, as in Pittsburg, men do business on the 
low grounds by the river, where offices and mills and 
shops crowd one another, and the smoke of soft coal hangs 
as a cloud above. Business hours over, the well-to-do 
merchants climb out of the grimy town to the top of the 
bluffs, and there find, in a clearer air and along open and 
beautiful avenues, their comfortable homes. Dow^n town 
the turbulent river sometimes comes up forty or fifty 
feet beyond its usual level and makes trouble in the 
busy city, but Mt. Auburn and Walnut Hills are dis- 
turbed neither by smoke nor by floods. 

Rivers do not often flow in straight lines, and it is very 
common for them to change their courses along their flood 
plains. This habit of shifting belongs alike to great and 
small streams, whether the Mississippi or the brook in the 
meadow. The Ohio, like other rivers, often writes the letter 
S, and in so doing at this point has swung off from its old 
north bank, leaving a low plain with room enough for a hun- 
dred thousand people to carry on their business. There is 



124 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

always some good reason which has led to the settlement 
and growth of a town, and the history of Cincinnati 
shows no exception. 

It was in early winter, 1788, when cakes of ice were 
already floating on the river, that a number of men sail- 
ing downstream stopped here and began a settlement. 
The place was not readily named. It is said that the 
matter was left to a frontier schoolmaster, and he did not 
lose the chance to show how much he knew. He saw 
that the Licking river comes into the Ohio on the Ken- 
tucky side just opposite. So he set down an L. He 
next remembered an ancient word os, meaning ''mouth," 
and he put that down. Then he considered that anti 
means "opposite" and that ville means "town." So he 
wrote the whole name, — L-os-aiiti-ville, — Losmitiville, 
— ''the town opposite the mouth of Licking." 

We might wonder whether a town with a name like 
that would ever grow into a great city. It did not have 
to try, for it was not long before General St. Clair, who 
had come there, made fun of the name and insisted upon 
a new one. He and other officers of the American army 
had formed a society commemorating their experience in 
the Revolution, and in honor of the Roman patriot Cin- 
cinnatus had called themselves the Order of Cincinnati. 
St. Clair thought this a good name for the town, and 
Cincinnati it has been since that time. 

The place has its nickname also, and its people like to 
call it the Queen City, which seems to go very well with 
Beautiful River. Another name, rarely used and not 
very pleasing, perhaps, to those who live there, is " Pork- 
opolis," which came from the fact that for forty years 




125 



126 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

before the American Civil War more pork packing was 
done in Cincinnati than anywhere else in the country. 

Sir Charles Lyell, an Englishman who saw Cincinnati 
in 1842, speaks of the " pork aristocracy," explaining that 
he means the men that had grown rich by packing pork, 
and not the pigs that he saw running in the streets. 
This shows how new some of our large business centers 
are, though it would be a great mistake to suppose that 
pigs and cows now run loose in western cities. In those 
days such places were teaching the country how to '' pack 
fifteen bushels of corn into a pig," and how to send the 
produce of the farms to distant cities or other lands in 
such a way as to get the most money for the least freight. 

When Charles Dickens visited this country many years 
ago he went to Cincinnati, and spoke well of the place. 
This was a great compliment, for the famous English 
story-teller was hard to suit when he was looking at 
anything American. If he could come back to Cincin- 
nati now, he might find even more to please and sur- 
prise him. 

Cincinnati has always made much use of the river. 
There were little boats in which the owners carried no- 
tions and such things as a country store sells, peddling 
them from one settlement to another along the banks. 
There were barges and flatboats bearing families and 
farm produce. Then came steamboats, which carried 
everything, — passengers, grain, coal, merchandise, and 
even circuses and menageries. We can imagine the 
excitement among the small boys of a river town when 
the circus boat told of its arrival by the fierce blast of 
a loud steam whistle. There are steamboats yet and a 



CITIES OF THE OHIO VALLEY 127 

busy river front, but great railroads center here, and 
trains run to Pittsburg and Philadelphia, Cleveland and 
New York, Chicago and St. Louis, Nashville and New 
Orleans. A vast business is done. There are many schools, 
and to-day Cincinnati can boast of her music, of her 
pictures and museums, and of the fine pottery that she 
makes. She has thrown off the schoolmaster's clumsy 
name, she has many better things than pork, and she is 
widely known as one of America's great cities. 

An early writer says that the Ohio is " by far the 
noblest river in the universe." He writes this in the 
beginning of a history of Louisville, a book which was 
printed in 18 19. This in itself shows that Louisville is 
one of the old cities of the Ohio valley. It is not so large 
as Cincinnati or Pittsburg, but it is the chief city of the 
great state of Kentucky. 

The old boatmen, finding that the current was rapid 
at a certain point, called it the "falls of the Ohio." 
A ledge of hard rocks in the bed of the river caused 
the rapids and made it no easy task to navigate boats. 
Finally a canal was dug by which the rapids might be 
avoided at low water. 

It was this ledge in the river that started the town 
and finally made a city out of Louisville, for boats going 
in either direction naturally stopped at the falls. There 
was another reason, too, as we shall see when we learn 
something of the "Wilderness Road," which crossed 
Kentucky from the eastern mountains and came out 
on the river at Louisville. Back from the river also lay 
the rich and fertile Blue Grass country for which Ken- 
tucky is famous. 



128 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

The canal was ready to take steamboats around the 
ledge m 1831. Some of these boats had interestmg 
names, such as the Enterprise, the Vesuvius, the Comet, 
the Volcano, the New Orleans, the Cincinnati, the 
Experiment, the Rijiemaji, and the Rising States. 

It was a wonderful life on the river, and Louisville got 
her share of the gain of it, as she now shares the traffic 
of the railroads. To-day she is a rich and beautiful city 
of two hundred thousand people. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE GREAT VALJ.EY 

Alexander Spotswood was a famous governor of the 
colony of Virginia. He was of Scottish parentage, but 
he was born in Morocco, where his father was a surgeon. 
The lad grew up to serve his country as a soldier, and 
was wounded by a cannon ball in a great war then going 
on in Europe. In 1710 the king sent him to Virginia 
to be governor, an office which he filled for twelve years. 
The people liked him, though he made some enemies 
because he kept his soldierly ways and did not always 
speak in gentle phrases. He was a kind, warm-hearted 
man, nevertheless, loving his family and friends. His 
energy, too, was well known, and he was always ready 
to further a new scheme. 

Because he started the first iron furnaces in America 
he was called the "Tubal Cain of Virginia," Tubal Cain 
being know^n in sacred history as the first of metal 
workers. Nothing was more important to the colonists 
than iron, for they could not always bring tools and 
kettles and nails and gun metal from England. The 
governor showed his practical ability in other ways. He 
brought over Germans who knew how to raise grapes 
and make wine. He was interested in teaching the 
Indians, and at one time he sent out ships and caught 

129 



I30 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

" Blackbeard," who, with his fellow-pirates, was prowl- 
ing about the coast. When the young Benjamin Frank- 
lin, in Boston, heard of the capture he wrote a poem 
about it. 

In that day nearly all of Virginia was in the " tide-water 
country," but Spotswood had often heard of the valley 
beyond the Blue Ridge. He made up his mind to go and 
see this region, and brought together a party to make the 
journey. They took their servants and pack horses and 
carried provisions and many bottles of the wine which 
the Germans had made. There was good hunting in the 
unbroken forest and they had all the venison and other 
wild meat they could have wished. 

A good map of Virginia will show us Harpers Ferry, 
where the Potomac river runs through a deep gap in the 
Blue Ridge. Looking along the range to the southwest, 
we shall find, about eighty miles away, Swift Run Gap, 
not so low a pass, but one which made it easy to cross 
the mountains and go down into the lowlands along the 
Shenandoah river. 

Spotswood and his friends climbed one of the peaks 
of the Blue Ridge and named it Mt. George, after the 
king. Another peak was named Alexander for the gov- 
ernor. Down by the Shenandoah they buried a bottle 
(the historian of Virginia thinks that by this time they 
must have had several that were empty), and in the 
bottle was a paper stating that they took possession 
in the name of the king. They called the river the 
Euphrates, but the name did not cUng to it. We may 
be glad of that, for the Indian name of Shenandoah is 
much more musical. 




131 



132 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

If Spotswood had crossed the lowlands, he would 
have found himself among other mountains running par- 
allel to the Blue Ridge. Between the two ranges is the 
valley of the Shenandoah, or, as it is quite as often called, 
the valley of Virginia. The land is flat and the soil deep 
and rich. The soft shales and limestone of ancient 
higher lands have wasted away here, between the higher 
mountains on either side, and thus we find a valley and 
a fertile valley floor. 

The place was wild and lonely when this band of 
explorers visited it, but to-day it is a country rich in 
interest and associations. If we go northeast we shall 
pass Winchester, which became famous in the Civil 
War. In another part of the valley is Luray, where the 
limestones have been dissolved under the ground, mak- 
ing a large cavern with beautiful stalactites. Still going 
northward, we shall pass Harpers Ferry on our right 
and cross the Potomac. On our right also, after we 
cross the river, is Antietam, where a severe battle was 
fought between Lee and McClellan. A little farther on 
is Hagerstown, Colonel Rochester's old home, in the 
state of Maryland. 

The next move would take us over into Pennsylvania, 
through Chambersburg and Carlisle, about which we 
already know, and across the Susquehanna to Harrisburg. 
On our right, as we go up into Pennsylvania, is the low 
South mountain, which is the Blue Ridge continued. All 
this time we are in the Great Valley. The valley of 
Virginia is but a part of the whole, which reaches through 
several states and everywhere has the Blue Ridge on the 
southeast and other ridges of the Appalachian mountains 



THE GREAT VALLEY 133 

on the northwest. Every part of the valley is thickly 
settled and has fine houses and homes, because its soil 
produces good crops and makes the people prosperous. 

Spotswood's journey opened the way for families from 
the tide-water region to settle beyond the mountains, but 
they were not the only settlers. It was easy for the 
people of the Great Valley in Pennsylvania, where the 
land was earlier taken up, to push to the southwest along 
the same valley. They found smoother traveling and 
better farms than if they had gone up into the mountains 
on the west. So we see that the valley, leading south- 
west, guided the stream of emigrants in that direction. 
The result was that the valley of Virginia was occupied 
partly by people entering through Pennsylvania, and 
partly by those who, like Spotswood, came through passes 
in the Blue Ridge. It was thirty years later, when most 
of the land was still a wilderness, that we find George 
Washington crossing these same mountains to survey 
for Lord Fairfax. His path lay between Harpers Ferry 
and Swift Run Gap. 

In this valley, during the Civil War, "Stonewall" 
Jackson, Sheridan, and other well-known generals took 
their armies up and down, and fought a number of bat- 
tles. The rich farms and full barns of the valley played 
no small part in the strife by furnishing food for the 
soldiers. 

The headwaters of the James river are in the Great 
Valley. One branch flows southwest and another north- 
east. These come together and go out to the southeast 
by a gap in the Blue Ridge. To-day we come up the 
Shenandoah by the Norfolk and Western Railway, which 



134 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



continues along these branches of the James. Before 
long we reach Roanoke, a flourishing city just inside the 
Blue Ridge. Then follows the crossing of the New river, 
which flows northwest across the valley on its long 
course to the Ohio. 

Now we are looking toward Tennessee, and the Great 
Valley soon takes us to several long streams which help 

to form the Ten- 
nessee river. The 
heads of these 
streams we shall 
find in Virginia, 
and their names 
are the Holston, 
the Clinch, and 
Powell's river. 
The Great Valley 




Fig. 51. James River Gap in the Blue 
Ridge, from the West 



in this southwestern part of Virginia is really divided 
into several valleys by long and rather high ridges that 
separate these rivers. 

The main line of the Southern Railway, between 
Washington and Knoxville, runs along the valley of the 
Holston river and crosses from Virginia into Tennessee 
at Bristol. 

After we come into Tennessee the ridges that sepa- 
rate the streams fall away again, and we find one great 
valley, about forty miles wide. On the northwest the 
Cumberland plateau and the Cumberland mountains rise 
above it. On the southeast there loom up the Great 
Smoky mountains on the border of North Carolina. 
Great Smoky is only another name for the Blue 



THE GREAT VALLEY 



135 



Ridge, for it is the same range, only higher and wider 
than it is farther north. 

Although this valley is a part of the Great Valley, 
it is commonly called the valley of east Tennessee, its 
people using the home name as they do in Virginia. The 
Holston, the Clinch, and Powell's river are not the only 
branches of the Tennessee. Out of the Great Smoky 
mountains there flow from the east the French Broad, the 
Little Tennessee, and the Hiwassee. Knoxville stands 
a little below the place where the Holston and French 
Broad flow together, and Chattanooga is a hundred miles 
farther down, where the Tennessee, now a lordly stream, 
leaves the Great Valley and flows westward through a 
deep valley in the Cumberland plateau. This lesson in 
geography we must learn well, with the help of a map, 
and we shall then see what the pioneers did as they fol- 
lowed the rivers between the mountains. 

It is an old road that runs from Pennsylvania to 
Tennessee by the valley. It took the pioneer across 
the Potomac through Winchester and Staunton in Vir- 
ginia. P^arther on was a fortified place. Fort Chissel, 
built in 1758, which was on the way to the Watauga 
Settlement and Cumberland Gap. Of Watauga we 
must now tell, and of the Cumberland Gap in the next 
chapter. 

Watauga is the name of a small river which flows out 
of the mountains on the east, into the Great Valley, and 
enters the Holston. In a pleasant spot on the banks of 
this stream the first settlement of white men in Tennes- 
see was made. Some of the people had come along the 
valley from Pennsylvania and Virginia, and others had 



136 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



climbed over the mountains from North Carolina because 
of the wrongs they had suffered there. 

Many of these men and women had come from the 
north of Ireland. They were not of Irish but of Scotch 
blood, their ancestors having originally come from Scot- 
land to make the north of Ireland their home. For this 
reason they are often called Scotch-Irish, but whatever 
we name them, we are to remember that they were sturdy 
and intelligent people. Conscientious and loyal Presby- 




FiG. 52. Hilly Farm Lands ln the (Ireat Valley, near 
Knoxville 

terians they were in faith, and by nature brave and full 
of endurance. Their fathers had shed their blood for 
freedom on Scottish fields, and the sons were not likely 
to be frightened by a wilderness full of red savages. 

Besides the Scotch-Irish, there were many Germans 
who had followed the valley from Pennsylvania, and 
there were Huguenots also, besides a few Hollanders 
and Swedes. A fort was built on the little river, and 
around this defense grew up the Watauga Settlement. 
There was no Tennessee in those days. 



THE GREAT VALLEY 



m 



Many of the settlers had followed down the valleys 
from earlier homes in Virginia, and it never occurred to 
them that they were not still living in Virginia, and able 
to call on the colony for help. But after a time a man 
came to the settlement who was a surveyor, and for 
some reason he thought that he would run the boundary 
line of Virginia farther west. When he had done it, what 
was the surprise of every one to find that they were not 
in Virginia at all ! If they belonged to any colony, it 
was to North Carolina. Unfortunately there was a lack 
of good government in that colony, and the prospect of 
belonging to it was not a pleasant one ; indeed, some of 
the settlers had run away from North Carolina, and had 
felt safer because the great mountains rose between 
them and their former ho.me. 

There seemed nothing to do but to make a government 
of their own, so they formed the Watauga Association, 
about which writers of American history have said a 
good deal. It would be interesting to see a copy of the 
constitution that was drawn up by these backwoodsmen, 
but it has been lost, with little hope that it will ever 
be recovered. It is known, however, that there was a 
committee of thirteen, really a legislature. This com- 
mittee chose five of their own number to form a court, 
which had a clerk and a sheriff and made laws for all the 
settlers. Roosevelt, in his Winning of the West, says 
that these pioneers were the first to build a ''free and 
independent community " in America. 

The two most important men of this little state in the 
wild forest show us that the settlers came from widely 
different places. James Robertson was one, and he came 



138 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

over the mountains from North Carohna. John Sevier 
was the other, and he came down the valley from Vir- 
ginia. We shall need to know what sort of men these 
were. 

James Robertson belonged to the Scotch-Irish people. 
He was not one of the very first settlers at Watauga, but 
came in the second year, 1770. He had no early educa- 
tion, and his wife, an intelligent woman, taught him to 
read. He went alone over the mountains, with only his 
horse and gun, in search of a place for a home. He found 
the settlers and admired the place which they had cho- 
sen, but on his way back in the fall he lost his horse and 
got his powder wet. He wandered about, almost starved, 
until he met some hunters, who helped him home. He 
told his neighbors of the lands in the valley, and as soon 
as the winter was over his own family and sixteen others 
started out for Watauga. He built a log house, went to 
work on the land, and by his wisdom and energy soon 
came to be a leader of the new colony. 

John Sevier did not come until 1772. His father had 
been a settler in the Shenandoah valley, and John fol- 
lowed the streams, as we have traced them, to the Great 
Valley. He was by birth a gentleman, using that word 
to mean a man born of cultivated parents and familiar 
with the world. He was well educated and was acquainted 
with prominent men, such as Franklin and Madison. 
Both he and Robertson were good fighters, as we shall 
see. 

It was not long before seven hundred Indian warriors, 
angry because the white people had made homes on their 
hunting grounds, stole in upon the settlement. An 



THE GREAT VALLEY I 39 

Indian woman, Nancy Ward by name, who felt kindly 
toward the whites, secretly warned them of the attack, 
so that when the savages came they found all the men, 
women, and children in the fort. It was not much of a 
fort, but it saved their lives. The Indians kept up the 
attack for six days, but the colonists, led by Sevier and 
Robertson, held out against them and killed a number of 




Fig. 53. From the Pinnacle, Cumberland Gap, looking North- 
east ALONG the Cumberland Mountains. The Great Valley 
AT the Right 

their braves. When nearly a week had passed the red 
men, tired of the siege, went off through the forest. 

At one time, when some lawless whites had killed 
an Indian without reason, the members of the tribe 
were very angry and threatened to avenge the murder. 
Robertson, thinking that he could soften their anger, 
went alone among the fierce Cherokees. He told them 
that the Watauga people were very sorry the man had 
been killed, and that they would try to find and punish 



140 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

the murderer. As the Indians beUeved Robertson to be 
an honest man, they did as he asked them to do and 
the settlers were not disturbed. 

The Watauga colonists had to live in a very rough 
and simple way. They built their cabins of logs, with 
what were called puncheon floors, — that is, floors made 
of thick, rude slabs. Frequently a big slab served for a 
table, three-legged stools for chairs, and a row of pegs 
for a wardrobe. Roosevelt says that the dress of the 
men was largely copied from that of the Indians, and 
included a fur cap, leggings of buckskin or elk hide, and 
a fringed hunting shirt. A heavy rifle was carried, which 
was usually fired from a rest. 

Garments and bed clothing were made of wool, which 
was spun at home by the wives and daughters. The 
women worked hard from morning till night, and the 
men had many things to do. There were lands to be 
cleared, crops to be raised, and game to be hunted and 
dressed. Besides all these occupations it was necessary 
to keep a constant lookout for hostile savages and to 
have all means of defense ready in case of a sudden 
attack. The Indians were so crafty and deceitful that 
only the closest watchfulness saved the palefaces from 
danger and death. Sometimes an unwary hunter, hearing 
the gobbling of a turkey or the call of an owl, would 
come out into an open place only to be laid low by the 
red man's bullet. These experiences developed a strong 
and brave people. 

The settlers often bartered things because they had no 
money, and they were ignorant of many of the ways of 
civilized life. Some of the frontiersmen did not know 



THE GREAT VALLEY I4I 

that tea leaves should l:)c steeped and used for a (hink, 
and tried to eat them with butter or salt. 

When a boy was twelve years old he had to begin to 
take a man's part. A gun was given to him, and he 
was placed at a loophole in the fort to help keep off the 
savage foe. Thus the boys grew up to be real men, 
knowing little fear, able to take care of themselves, and 
helping to build one of the great states of the American 
Union. 



CHAPTER XII 

TO KENTUCKY BY THE CUMBERLAND GAP 

Dr. Thomas Walker was a man of Virginia. He had 
attended Wilham and Mary College, and was well edu- 
cated for his times. As the agent of a land company 
which had a grant of new lands in Kentucky, he, with 
several companions, made a hard journey of six months 
into the wilderness. They started at Charlottesville in 
Virginia, went through the Blue Ridge into the Great 
Valley, and then followed the valley southwest. One of 
Walker's companions bore the name of Ambrose Powell, 
and as they followed one of the long streams that flow 
to the southwest to form the Tennessee, they named it 
Powell's river. His son afterwards was an officer in the 
Revolution, and it is said that A. P. Hill, a well-known 
Confederate general in the Civil War, was his great- 
grandson. 

These were, in fact, no common men who, in the year 
1750, ventured out into the forest, over the. roughest 
trails we can imagine, among wild animals and savage 
men. Following down Powell's river, the travelers saw 
rugged mountains on their right, the Cumberland range. 
As they wished to explore the forests of Kentucky, they 
were looking for a chance to pass the mountains, and by 
and by they came in sight of a deep notch, cut at least 

142 



TO KENTUCKY BY THE CUMBERLAND CAP 143 

a thousand feet below the toj) of the mountain ridge 
(Fig. 54)- 

They turned aside to this and followed it out of the 
Great Valley. They had to climb up about five hundred 
feet through a wooded ravine in order to reach the top 
of the pass, and there was a similar slope on the other 
side. This brought them to an open valley and to a 




Fig. 54. Cumberland Gap from the East 

river, which they followed through a gap in another 
mountain range, the Pineville mountains. 

Dr. Walker called the first pass the Cumberland Gap, 
in honor of a well-known Englishman, and the name 
has survived even to the present day. In like manner 
we have the Cumberland mountains. Walker did not go 
far enough west to find the beautiful Kentucky lands 
on the Ohio river. After wandering about in the high, 
rough country of eastern Kentucky, he finally reached 
his Virginia home without having accomplished much 
in the service of his company. 



144 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

But he had found and named what has become one of 
the most famous historical places in America, the Cum- 
berland Gap. He was not the first man to go through 
it, for the Indians had long been familiar with it. Their 
trail had traversed it for no one knows how many gener- 
ations. Not only did it lead directly to the open, fertile 
country west of the mountains, but beyond it the war- 
rior's trail stretched northward through the woods to 
the Ohio river. 

The Watauga Settlement was about fifty miles east- 
ward from the Cumberland Gap. As the hardy pioneers 
did not make much of following a forest trail for fifty 
miles, the Watauga colony was next door to Kentucky, 
and the great gap in the Cumberland mountains was 
only a step farther on, either for them or for travelers 
to the West who might choose this route. 

We must now follow the fortunes of the most famous 
of Kentucky hunters and pioneers, who, while he did not 
find or name the Cumberland Gap, often went through 
it, and is remembered by most people in connection 
with it. This man was Daniel Boone. 

We could not find a better example of the movement 
along the Great Valley to the southwest than the life of 
Boone ; for his childhood was spent on what was then 
the frontier, and his experience was like that of hundreds 
of others similarly reared. 

Boone was born near the Schuylkill river in Penn- 
sylvania in 1734, two years after the birth of Washington. 
This part of Pennsylvania was still on the edge of the 
wilderness, and from his early boyhood Boone knew 
all about the Indians. His family were Quakers, and he 



TO KENTUCKY BY THE CUMBERLAND GAP 145 

himself was quiet and thoughtful, learning to read from 
the Quaker wife of his eldest brother, but getting most of 
his education in the fields and woods. Though he could 




Fig. 55. Daniel Koone 

read, he spelled almost as badly as did Nicholas Herki- 
mer. Boone had some experience as a blacksmith, which, 
his biographer says, taught him how to mend his traps 
and guns. He used to hunt in the woods in winter, 
helping thus to feed the family, and with the skins which 



146 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

he took to Philadelphia he bought powder, lead, and 
hunting knives. 

When Boone was about sixteen years old his family 
decided to move. They went along the Great Valley, as 
many were doing in those days, crossed the Potomac, 
and traveled far through the valley of Virginia. Then 
they turned east, crossed the Blue Ridge, and made a 
home in the valley of the Yadkin river in North Carolina. 
They were thus east of the mountains, and across, to the 
west, was the Watauga Settlement. 

While his home was in North Carolina Boone had an 
experience which helped him to be a rugged pioneer, for 
he went up to Virginia and across the mountains with 
General Braddock, serving as wagoner and blacksmith. 
He found himself in dangerous quarters in the battle, 
where many of the teamsters were shot, but he man- 
aged to cut his horses loose, mounted one of them, and 
escaped. 

On this expedition he made friends with John Finley, 
and together they planned to go at some future time to 
Kentucky by the Cumberland Gap and enjoy the fine 
hunting in the forests of the West. Plnley had already 
made a journey down to the falls of the Ohio river. 

At home Boone lived, like all others in those valleys, 
in a small log cabin chinked with clay and warmed by 
a large fireplace, in which, says his biographer, " the 
young wife (for Boone was now married) cooked simple 
meals of corn mush, pumpkins, squashes, beans, potatoes, 
and pork, or wild meat of many kinds." 

Boone spent his time in farming, working at the forge, 
and hunting ; but he liked hunting best, and was never 



TO KENTUCKY BY THE CUMBERLAND (lAP 147 

SO happy as in the thick forest alone with his <;un. lie 
often went on long hunting trips, returning with bear's 
meat, venison, bear's oil, and furs, the last to be sold 
for other things needed at home. 

In 1767 Boone and one or two friends made a hunt- 
ing tour into Kentucky, though they did not know they 
were so far west as that. As they were kept there by 




Fig. 56. FiNEViLLE Gap, where the Cumberland River passes 
PiNEViLLE Mountain a Few Miles beyond Cumberland Gap 

heavy snows, they camped at a "salt lick" and lived by 
shooting the buffaloes and other animals that came to 
get the salt. 

The hunters returned to their homes in the spring 
and did not go out until 1769. Meantime John Finley 
was peddling in that south land, and one day surprised 
Boone, and himself, too, by knocking at the door of 
Boone's cabin. He made the hardy pioneer a long visit, 



148 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

and in the spring, having talked it all over many times, 
they set out for Kentucky. 

They crossed the Blue Ridge and the Great Valley 
and came to Cumberland Gap. This was Boone's first 
journey to the great pass. It is pleasant now to stand 
in the gap at the top of the pass and think of the 
time when Boone with his hunting friends made their 
way up from the east and went happily down through 
the woods to the strange country on the west. 

At one time they were taken by Indians, who plun- 
dered their camp and stole all their furs. Most of the 
party were discouraged and went back to the settlements, 
but Boone and one companion were angry at their loss 
and determined to stay and make it good. This was like 
Boone, who knew nothing of fear, and who did not easily 
give up what he wanted to do. 

He made several trips to Kentucky and greatly liked 
the new country. At length, having decided to take his 
family with him and make his home there, he became 
the leader of the pioneers that went out under the 
Transylvania Company, as it was called. 

They built a fort and founded a place named Boones- 
borough, after the great hunter. But he was much more 
than a hunter, being now a military commander and do- 
ing surveying also for people who were taking up tracts 
of new land. Houses and forts were built, forests were 
cleared, and crops were raised. Such was the beginning 
of the state of Kentucky. 

It was not all simple and pleasant work, however. 
In 1 768, the year before Daniel Boone and John Finley 
went through the Cumberland Gap, a great company of 



TO KENTUCKY BY THE CUMBERLAND GAP 149 

Indians had gathered at Fort Stanwix, which we remem- 
ber from the battle of Oriskany, and by a treaty had 
given to the Enghsh the rights to the Kentucky region. 
But the powerful Cherokees of the southern mountains 
were not at Fort Stanwix, and they had something to say 
about the settlement of Kentucky lands. So Boone called 
them together at a great meeting on the Watauga river, 
and bought the Kentucky forests from them. This was 
the time when an old chief said to Boone, " Brother, we 
have given you a fine land, but I believe you will have 
much trouble settling it." The old Indian was right, — 
they did have much trouble. Cabins were burnt, and 
settlers were slain with gun and tomahawk, but Boone 
and many others with him would admit no failure. 
People began to pour in through the Cumberland Gap, 
until more forests were cleared, the towns grew larger, 
and the Indians, who do not like to fight in the open 
country, drew back to the woods and the mountains. 

Boone marked out the trail which was afterwards 
known as the Wilderness road. It had also been known 
as Boone's trail, Kentucky road, Virginia road, and 
Caintuck Hog road. A man who went out with Boone 
in one of his expeditions to Kentucky kept a diary, and 
in it he gives the names of some of the new settlers. 
One of these was Abraham Hanks, who was Abraham 
Lincoln's grandfather. It was no easy journey that these 
men made to Kentucky, and no easy life that they found 
when they got there, but they planted the first American 
state beyond the mountains, and the rough pioneers who 
lived in cabins and ate pork, pumpkins, and corn bread 
were the ancestors of some of our most famous men. 



ISO 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



The Wilderness road has never been a good one, and is 
no more than any other byroad through a rough country 
to-day. Sometimes the early travelers, who always went 
in companies for safety, would be too tired to go on until 
they had stopped to rest and to get cheer by singing 
hymns and saying prayers. But they made the best of 




Fig. 57. Cornfield near Cumberland Gap 

it, for they knew that they were going to a fine country, 
which would repay them for their sufferings. 

Boone and five other men were once in camp by a 
stream, and were lucky enough to have with them the 
story of Giillivci' s Travels. One of the young men, who 
had been hearing the book read by the camp fire, came 
in one night bearing a couple of scalps that he had taken 
from a pair of savages. He told his friends that "he 
had been that day to Lulbegrud and had killed two 



TO KENTUCKY BY THE CUMBERLAND GAP 151 

Brobdingnags in their capital." The stream near which it 
happened is still called Lulbegrud creek. These wilder- 
ness men made the best of things, and though they 
worked hard and fought often, they were a cheerful and 
happy company. They were not spoiled by having too 
many luxuries, and they did not think that the world 
owed them a living without any effort on their part. 

Beginning about the time of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, many people found the way to Kentucky by 
the Great Valley, the Cumberland Gap, and the Wilder- 
ness road. When fifteen years had gone by there were sev- 
enty thousand people in Kentucky, along the Ohio river. 
Not all had come by the gap, for some had sailed down 
the river ; but they all helped to plant the new state. 

Moreover in fighting off the Indians from their own 
cabins and cornfields they had protected the frontiers of 
Virginia and others of the older states, so that Kentucky 
was a kind of advance guard beyond the mountains, and 
led the way for Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, and other great 
states in the West and South. 

Down in the heart of Kentucky, by the Ohio river, is 
a land long known as the Kentucky Blue Grass region. 
The ** blue grass," as it is called, grows luxuriantly here, 
as do grain and tobacco, for the soils, made by the 
wasting of limestone, are rich and fertile. Wherever the 
soil and climate are good, crops are large and the people 
thrive. They have enough to eat and plenty to sell, and 
thus they can have good homes, many comforts, books, 
and education. 

If the pioneers had had to settle in the high, rough, 
eastern parts of Kentucky, it would not have been worth 



152 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

while to suffer so much to get there ; but they were on the 
way to the Blue Grass country. Even before the coming 
of the white man there were open lands which, perhaps 
by Indian fires, had lost their cover of trees. Such lands 
are often called prairies. These prairies, however, were 
not so flat as those of Illinois, and they were bordered by 
groves and forests. There were fine streams everywhere, 
and near by was the great Ohio, ready to serve as a high- 
way toward Philadelphia or New Orleans. 




Fig. 55. ivKNiickv iU.i.i: Grass 

The Wilderness road came out on the river at the falls 
of the Ohio, and here, as we have learned, a city began 
to spring up, partly because of the falls and partly be- 
cause of the Blue Grass region lying back of it. In this 
region we find the state capital, and here, along the roads, 
may be seen old mansions belonging to well-to-do descend- 
ants of the plucky men who came in by the Wilderness 
road or steered their flatboats down the Ohio. 

If we go back to Cumberland Gap, we shall see that 
many things have happened since Boone's time. In the 
pass and on the Pinnacle, a thousand feet above on the 
north, are ridges of earth, which show where busy shovels 



TO KENTUCKY BY THE CUMliERLAND GAP 153 



threw up defenses in the Civil War; for armies passed this 
way between Kentucky and the valley of Tennessee, and 
made the gap an important point to be seized and held. 

The road through the gap is still about as bad a path 
as one could find. Near it on the east side of the moun- 
tains is yet to be seen a furnace of rough stones, built 
in those early days for smelting iron. But there is little 
else to remind us of that 
far-off time. To-day you 
may, if you choose, pass 
the mountains without 
climbing through the 
gap, for trains go roaring 
through a tunnel a mile 
long, while the echo of 
the screaming whistles 
rolls along the moun- 
tain sides. 



On the flat grounds 
just inside the gap is 
Middlesboro, a town of 
several thousand people, 




Fig. 59. Three States Mom ment, 
Cumberland Gap 



with wide streets and well-built shops and houses. Only 
a few miles away are coal mines from which thousands of 
tons of coal are dug, and this is one reason why the rail- 
roads are here. There are endless stores of fuel under 
these highlands, and men are breaking into the wilderness 
as fast as they can. 

But if we climb through the gap as Boone did, or ride 
a horse to the Pinnacle, we may look out upon the wonder- 
ful valley below, stretching off to the foot of the Great 



154 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

Smoky mountains, whose rugged tops carry our eyes far 
over into North CaroHna. Or we may turn the other 
way and follow Boone's trail to the Blue Grass. Down 
in the gap is a rough, weather-beaten pillar of limestone 
about three feet high and leaning as the picture shows 
(Fig. 59). It is almost, but not quite, where three states 
come together, for it is here, at the Cumberland Gap, 
that the corners of Virginia and Kentucky meet on the 
edge of Tennessee. 



CHAPTER XIII 

FRONTIER SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN 

Not long before the Revolution began some treach- 
erous whites in the western country had murdered the 
whole family of the friendly Indian chief, Logan. This 
aroused the tribes and led to war. A piece of flat land 
runs out between the two streams where the Great 
Kanawha river joins the Ohio, in what is now West 
Virginia. Here, on a day early in October, 1774, twelve 
hundred frontiersmen were gathered under the command 
of an officer named Andrew Lewis. 

These backwoods soldiers were attacked by a thousand 
of the bravest Indian waiTiors, commanded by Cornstalk, 
a Shawnee chief. It was a fierce struggle and both sides 
lost many men, but the pioneers held their ground, and 
the red men, when they had had enough fighting, went 
away. This battle at Point Pleasant finished what is 
sometimes known as Lord Dunmore's War, so called be- 
cause it was carried on under Lord Dunmore, the last 
governor that the English king sent out to Virginia. 

The successful white men were now free to go down 
the Ohio river and settle on the Kentucky lands. Among 
the patriots fighting for their frontier homes were our old 
friends James Robertson and John Sevier of Watauga, 
and another young man, Isaac Shelby. We are to hear 

155 



156 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

again about all these, for they were men likely to be 
found whenever something important was to be done. 

The Great Kanawha is the same stream that we have 
called the New river where it crosses the Great Valley 
in Virginia. We are learning how many great rivers 
help to make up the Ohio, and what an important region 
the Ohio valley was to the young country east of the 
mountains. 

The settlements of which we have just read were all 
south of the Ohio river, for north of the river the 
Americans did not possess the land. This means that 
the country which now makes up the states of Ohio, 
Indiana, and Illinois was in foreign hands. The people 
were largely French and Indians, but they were gov- 
erned by the British. 

In order to defeat the Americans, the British, in all 
the years of the Revolutionary War, were stirring up the 
Indian tribes against the patriots. Just as St. Leger had 
Indian allies in New York, so British agents bribed 
the Indians of the West and South to fight and make 
as much trouble as possible. 

George Rogers Clark was a young Virginian who had 
gone out to Kentucky, which then belonged to the 
mother state. He heard that Colonel Henry Hamilton, 
who commanded the British at Detroit, was persuading 
the Indians of that region to attack the frontier. He 
set out for Virginia, saw Patrick Henry, the governor, 
Thomas Jefferson, and other leading men, and gained per- 
mission to gather an army. This was in 1777, the year 
of Oriskany and Saratoga. He spent the winter enlisting 
soldiers, gathering his forces at Pittsburg. 



FRONTIER SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN 157 

Late the next spring they went in boats down the Ohio 
to the point where the muddy waters of the Mississippi 




Fig. 60. George Rogers Clark 

come in from the north. This alone was a journey of 
a thousand miles. 

Up the Mississippi from that place was Kaskaskia, 
on the Illinois side. It is now a very small village, but 
it is the oldest town on the Mississippi river and was 



158 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

the first capital of Illinois. In the time of the Revolu- 
tion it was governed by the British, although most of 
the people were French. Clark and his little army soon 
seized the place and made the people promise obedience 
to the new government. 

There was another important old place called Vin- 
cennes, on the Wabash river, in what is now Indiana. 

When Colonel Hamilton heard what Clark was doing 
he led an army of five hundred men, many of whom were 
Indians, from Detroit to Vincennes. It took them more 
than two months to make the journey. Clark sent some 
of his men with boats and provisions and cannon down 
the Mississippi, up the Ohio, and up the Wabash. He, 
with most of his little force, went across the prairie. It 
was a winter march and they had to wade through flood 
waters for a part of the way. 

He found the food and the guns and soon captured 
Hamilton and his army. This was the last of British 
government between the Ohio river and the Great Lakes. 
At the close of the war the American messengers, who 
were in Paris arranging for peace, could say that they 
already had possession of all the land this side of the 
Mississippi, so no excuse was left for the British to 
claim it. In this way one frontier soldier saved several 
great states for his country. 

The frontiersmen had beaten Cornstalk at Point Pleas- 
ant in 1774. Clark had won the prairie country fiv^e 
years later; and the next year, 1780, saw the great 
victory of Kings Mountain. 

Lord Cornwallis was now chief general of the British. 
He had conquered the southern colonies, the Carolinas 



FRONTIER SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN 159 

and Georgia. Two of his officers, Tarleton and Fergu- 
son, were brave and active commanders, and they were 
running over the country east of the mountains keeping 
the patriots down. Ferguson gathered together many 
American Tories and drilled them to march and fight. 

The Watauga men, just over the mountains to the 
west, were loyal patriots. Ferguson heard of them and 




Fig. 61. On the French Broad, between Asheville and 

Knoxville 

sent them a stormy message. He told them to keep 
still or he would come over and scatter them and hang 
their leading men. 

They were not used to talk of this kind and they 
determined to teach Ferguson a lesson. Isaac Shelby 
rode in hot haste from his home to John Sevier's log 
house on the Nolichucky river. When he arrived he 
found all the neighbors there ; for Sevier had made 
a barbecue, and there was to be a big horse race, with 



l6o FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

running and wrestling matches. Shelby took Sevier off 
by himself and told him about Ferguson. They agreed 
to call together the mountain men and go over the Great 
Smokies to punish the British general. 

On September 25, 1780, they came together at Syca- 
more Shoals on the Watauga river. Almost everybody 
was there, women and children as well as men. Four 
hundred sturdy men came from Virginia under William 
and Arthur Campbell. These two leaders and most of 
the men in the valley were sons of old Scotch Covenant- 
ers, and they were determined to win. A stern Presby- 
terian minister, the Reverend Samuel Doak, was there. 
He had as much fight in him as any of them, and as they 
stood in their rough hunter's garb he called upon God 
for help, preaching to them from the words, '* The sword 
of the Lord and of Gideon." 

They set out at once through the mountains, driving 
beef cattle for part of their food supply, and every man 
armed with rifle, tomahawk, and scalping knife. Roose- 
velt says there was not a bayonet or a tent in their army. 
The trail was stony and steep, and in the higher moun- 
tains they found snow. They marched as quickly as 
they could, for they wanted to catch Ferguson before 
Cornwallis could send more soldiers to help him. 

On the way several hundred men from North Carolina, 
under Benjamin Cleveland, joined them. They had ap- 
pointed no commander when they started, but on the 
march they chose one of the Campbells from Virginia. 

When Ferguson found that they were pursuing him 
and that he must fight, he took up a strong position 
on Kings Mountain, in the northwest corner of South 



P^RONTIER SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN i6l 

Carolina. This hill was well chosen, for it stood by itself 
and on one side was too steep for a force to climb. 

Ferguson called his foes a '' swarm of backwoodsmen," 
but he knew that they could fight, or he would not have 
posted his own army with so much care. He felt sure 
of success, however, and thought that Heaven itself 
could hardly drive him off that hill. 

As the patriot leaders drew near the British camp 
they saw that many of their men were too weary to over- 
take the swift and wary Ferguson, should he try to get 
away. So they picked out about half of the force, nearly 
a thousand mounted men. These men rode all night, 
and the next day approached the hill. Those who had 
lost their horses on the way hurried on afoot and arrived 
in time to fight. When close at hand the riders tied their 
horses in the woods, and the little army advanced to the 
attack on foot. 

They moved up the three sides of the hill. Ferguson 
was famous for his bayonet charges, and the patriots had 
no bayonets. So when the British rushed down on the 
center of the advancing line the mountaineers gave way 
and the enemy pursued them down the hill. Then the 
backwoodsmen on the flanks rushed in and poured shot 
into the backs of the British. Turning to meet these 
new foes, the regulars were again chased up the hill and 
shot by the men who had fled from their bayonets. Thus 
shrewd tactics took the place of weapons. At length the 
gallant Ferguson was killed, the white flag was hoisted, 
and the firing stopped. Many British were slain, and all 
the rest, save a very few who escaped in the confusion, 
were made prisoners. 



1 62 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



It was a wonderful victory for the men from the val- 
ley. They had come from a region of which Cornwallis 
had hardly dreamed, and they had destroyed one of his 
armies and killed one of his best commanders. The battle 
turned the tide of the Revolution in the South, but the 




Fig. 62. John Sevier 

victors hurried back as quickly as they had come. They 
were not fitted for a long campaign, and, besides, they 
had left then- homes dangerously open to attacks from 
savages. It was, however, the one battle of the Revolu- 
tion against white foes alone that was planned, fought, 
and won by the men of the frontier. 

As soon as John Sevier returned to the valley he 
found plenty of Indian fighting to do. He was skilled 



FRONTIER SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN 163 

in this, and witli the Watauga men, who called him 
" Chucky Jack " and were devoted to him, he was a ter- 
ror to the red men of the southern mountains. He knew 
all their tricks and how to give them back what he called 
" Indian play." At one time he took a band of his fol- 
lowers and made a daring ride into the wildest of the 
Great Smokies, to attack some hostile tribes. He burned 
their villages, destroyed their corn, killed and captured 
some of their warriors, and got away before they could 
gather their greater numbers to crush him. 

We must not forget James Robertson, who all this 
time was doing his part of the farming and the fighting 
and the planning for the new settlements. Already the 
Watauga country began to have too many people and 
was too thickly settled to suit his temper, and he was 
thinking much about the wilderness beyond, near the 
lower part of the Cumberland river. In a great bend on 
the south bank of that stream he founded Nashborough 
in 1779, naming it in honor of Oliver Nash, governor of 
North Carolina. Five years later it became Nashville, 
and now we do not need to explain where it was. 

Robertson went out by the Cumberland Gap, but soon 
left Boone's road and went toward the west, following 
the trails. When he and his followers reached the place 
and decided upon it as suitable for settlement, they 
planted a field of corn, to have something to depend 
on for food later. 

The next autumn a large party of settlers went out 
to Nashborough. Robertson's family went with them. 
They did not go through the woods, but took boats to 
go down the Tennessee river. Their course led them 



164 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



along the Tennessee to the Ohio, then up the Ohio a 
few miles to the mouth of the Cumberland, and up the 
Cumberland to their new home. They had a long, dan- 
gerous voyage, and some of the party were killed, for 
the savages fired on them from the banks. 

One of the boats, carrying twenty-eight grown people 
and children, had a number of cases of smallpox on 

board . The I ndians attacked 
this boat and killed or cap- 
tured the four sick travelers. 
For their deed the savages 
were badly punished, for 
they took the disease, which 
soon spread widely among 
the tribes. 

For a long time after 
Nashville was begun the 
pioneers had fierce encoun- 
ters with the Indians, and 
in spite of all their care 
many lives were lost. Rob- 
ertson was the strong man of the place, and was rewarded 
with the confidence of the people. 

When Tennessee became a state he helped to make 
its constitution. He was a member of the state Senate 
in 1798, and lived long enough to keep some of the 
Indians from helping the British in the War of 18 12. 
He died in 18 14. 

He was brave, and willing to endure hardship, dis- 
comfort, and suffering in a good cause. He went alone 
over the snows to Kentucky to get powder, and returned 




Fig. 63. James Robertson 



FRONTIER SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN 165 



in time to save the little town from destruction. The 
Indians killed his own son, but he would not give up 
the settlement. Plain man though he was, he gained 
honor from the men of his time, and wrote his name on 
the pages of American history. 

We must learn a little more of Isaac Shelby, whom 
we have seen fighting hard at Point Pleasant and Kings 
Mountain. He was born 
in the Great Valley, at 
Hagerstown. When he 
was twenty-one years old 
he moved to Tennessee 
and then across to Ken- 
tucky. He fought in the 
Revolution in other bat- 
tles besides that of Kings 
Mountain, and before he 
went to Kentucky he had 
helped to make laws in 
the legislature of North 
Carolina. 

It is rather strange to read that Kentucky v^as made a 
" county " of Virginia. This was in i ']'j6. In 1 792, largely 
through Shelby's efforts, Kentucky was separated from 
Virginia and became a state by itself. It was the first 
state beyond the mountains, being four years older than 
Tennessee and eleven years ahead of Ohio. 

Isaac Shelby was the first governor of Kentucky, from 
1792 to 1796, and years later he was governor again. 
He fought in the War of 1 8 1 2, and his name is preserved 
in Shelbyville, a town of Kentucky. The Blue Grass 




Fig. 64. Sevier Monument, 
Knoxville 



1 66 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



region has been called the "dark and bloody ground" 
from the strifes of the red tribes and the troublous days 
of the first settlers, but Shelby lived to see it the center 
of a prosperous state. 

John Sevier, too, had more honors than those of a 
noble soldier. In front of the courthouse at Knoxville is 
a plain stone monument raised in his memory (Fig. 64), 
and down a side street is an old dwelling, said to be an 

early statehouse of the 
com mi on wealth which 
is still associated with 
his name. In 1785 the 
state of ''Franklin" 
was organized and 
named in honor of the 
illustrious Benjamin ; 
but North Carolina, 
being heartily opposed 
to the whole proceed- 
ing, put an end to it 
without delay. Sevier, 
as governor of the 
would-be state, was imprisoned, but escaped, to the de- 
light of his own people, who were always loyal to him. 
They sent him to Congress in a few years and in 1 796 
made him the first governor of Tennessee. He enjoyed 
many honors until his death in 181 5, which came soon 
after that of his more quiet friend, James Robertson. 
Both of these wilderness men had much to do with 
planting the American flag between the Appalachian 
mountains and the Mississippi river, 




Fig. 65. Old Statehouse at 
Knoxville 



CHAPTER XIV 

CITIES OF THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 

In the old days it took the traveler weeks to go from 
Pennsylvania or the Potomac river to the valley of east 
Tennessee. He might camp in the woods, living on the 
few provisions he could carry and on what he could shoot 
in the forest, or he might share the humble homes of 
chance settlers on the way. 

Now he enters a vestibuled train and is rolled over a 
smooth iron road along the streams and between the 
mountains. Starting one day, he will find when he 
wakes the next morning that the sun is rising over the 
Great Smokies, while around him are the rich rolling 
fields that border the Tennessee river. 

If the traveler wishes to see the land and learn what 
men have done in a hundred years, he will leave the 
train at Knoxville. A carriage or an electric car will 
carry him between blocks of fine buildings to a modern 
hotel, where he will find food and bed and places to read, 
write, rest, or do business, as he likes. Around him is a 
busy city stretching up and down its many hills. Before 
long he will wander down to the banks of the Tennessee 
river and see the boats tied at the wharf, or he will 
cross the great bridge to the hills beyond and look back 
over the city. 

167 



1 68 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



On those hilltops are pits dug in the woods, and 
some veteran of the Union or the Confederate army will 
tell him that these are ammunition pits. The old soldier 
will point across to where Fort Sanders stood, and will 




Fig. 66. Street in Knoxville 

describe those days in 1863 when Longstreet came up 
and laid siege to the town, which was garrisoned by 
Burnside and his army. 

Our traveler need do little more than cross the great 
bridge at Knoxville to find quarries of marble ; and if he 



CITIES OF THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 169 

goes up and down for a few miles, he will see rich de- 
posits of this stone. It is prized because it shows many 
colors, — cream, yellow, brown, red, pink, and l:)lue. The 
colors often run into each other in curious and fantastic 
ways, and the slabs and blocks when polished are beau- 
tiful indeed. These marbles have been used to adorn 




Fig. 67. On the Campus of the University of Tennessee 



some of the finest buildings in America, including the 
National Capitol. 

Around Knoxville are fine farms also, just as we find 
them about Harrisburg, Hagerstown, Winchester, and 
almost everywhere else in the Great Valley. Our view 
(Fig. 52) is taken near Knoxville and shows sloping fields 
always ready to bear good crops. The soils have been 
made by the wasting of the top parts of these same beds 
of marble and of other rocks found along with it. 



I/O 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



In Knoxville, on the edge of the city, is the Univer- 
sity of Tennessee, with many buildings upon its campus. 
It is an excellent school and an old one as well, having 
been founded in 1794. It was first named Blount Col- 
lege, from one of the prominent public men of the valley 
at that time, and is now one of the foremost schools of 
the South. 

Only seven years before that date tw^o old Revolu- 
tionary soldiers rode through the woods and picked out 
these lands, which w^ere given to them as a reward for 
their service in the war. Here they built as a defense 
against the savages a wooden fort, with log cabins at 
the corners and a stockade with a stout barred gate. 
Such a fort was greatly needed in those days whenever 
a new settlement was made. After the two soldiers had 
planted corn they went back to North Carolina to bring 
their famihes over the mountains. This was the begin- 
ning of Knoxville, which grew up around the fort and 
soon spread over the hills and down to the river. The 
settlement was named in honor of Henry Knox, who was 
an able general in the Revolution and a good friend of 
George Washington. 

Now the railroads reach out in every direction. They 
bring in the iron ore and the limestones of the valley. 
They also run up into the Cumberland Gap, and to 
Harriman, Tennessee, and bring back stores of coal, 
thus making Knoxville a place for working iron. To 
the east the Southern Railroad leads up the French 
Broad (Fig. 61) through deep gorges into the heart of 
the Great Smokies at Asheville, and across the Blue 
Ridge to the lowlands of North Carolina. 



CITIES OF THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 17I 



All this is very different from the samp mortars and 
the puncheon floors of early times, but the pioneers had a 
keen eye for the soil and the waters and the trees, and it 
is these which have helped to make the valley rich to-day. 

We must not forget that off to the west James Rob- 
ertson had founded a city that is even older than 




Fig. 68. Marble Quarry near Knoxville 

Knoxville. In the great bend of the Cumberland, on its 
south bank, in northern Tennessee, stands Nashville, as 
we have already seen. 

If we visit a large city in one of the countries of 
Europe, we are quite likely to be told, or to read in 
our guidebook, that its history goes back hundreds of 
years, and any town that was started only a hundred 



172 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

years ago would there seem young. But we measure 
age differently in America, and a town like Nashville, 
founded in 1780, we think is old indeed. It is not easy 
to remember, as we ride along the streets and see the 
shops and mansions of Nashville to-day, that this was 
once a place of log cabins, and that the first settlers 
had to sleep always with one ear open for the Indian's 
war cry. 

That James Robertson had to learn to read from his 
wife did not keep Nashville from becoming one of the 
centers of education and refinement in the South. It 
would take several lines to record the names of all the 
colleges and universities that now have their seat in this 
city. Robertson was the sort of man who, with the 
opportunities of to-day, might have been the president 
of one of these schools, or he might perhaps have gained 
a fortune with which to help in their support. Farther 
west, on the Mississippi river, stands Memphis, a city 
still larger than Nashville ; indeed, few southern states 
can boast of so many cities as Tennessee possesses. 
Besides these, there are fertile valleys, fine rivers and 
mountains, productive forests, beds of iron ore and 
coal, comfortable farms, and thriving towns. The state 
is rich, too, in historical associations. Every part of 
Tennessee saw the dark days of the Civil War, and in 
the fields south of Nashville a great battle was fought. 

When John Sevier went down the Tennessee river on 
his Indian raids he noticed that the stream, making a 
great bend, turns away from the valley and flows by a 
deep gorge through the highlands of the Cumberland 
plateau. We can take the train now at Knoxville, and a 



CITIES OF THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 173 

ride of a little more than a hundred miles will brini^^ us 
to this place. 

By the river is a steep, high ground known as Cameron 
hill. Let us go up to the top and look around. Stretch- 
ing away at our feet on the east is Chattanooga. Part 
of the city as we see it from Cameron hill is shown in 
the picture (Fig. 70). Beyond is the Tennessee, and we 




Fig. 69, State House, Nashville 

are looking up the river to the northeast. The bridge 
which we see is the only bridge across the river at 
Chattanooga, even though it is now a large and busy 
city. In the distance is high ground, a part of Mission- 
ary Ridge, famous in the story of the Civil War. 

If we turn around and look southward, we shall see 
Lookout Mountain, rising fifteen hundred feet above 
the river. A battle was fought on the steep slopes of 



174 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

this mountain also ; and a few miles to the southeast 
is Chickamauga, one of the bloodiest battle grounds of 
the war. On the edge of the city, kept with care, is the 
National Cemetery, where rest the bodies of more than 
twelve thousand soldiers, northern and southern, who 
perished in the neighborhood of Chattanooga. Now all 
the region is peaceful, and only the tablets of iron and 
bronze, set up by the government on every battlefield in 
the neighborhood, tell the story of the conflict as it 
raged about the city. 

Like Knoxville, Chattanooga has much coal and iron, 
is the center of a number of railways, and does much 
business. The railways run up the valley to Virginia, 
and south to Atlanta and elsewhere in Georgia. They 
stretch even further southward to Mobile and New 
Orleans, while the lines to the west reach Memphis 
and Nashville. Chattanooga is sometimes called the 
" Gate City " because it stands near the opening of the 
Great Valley into the wide plains along the gulf of 
Mexico. The place, originally called Ross's Landing, 
was not settled until 1836, when Knoxville and Nashville 
were about fifty years old. It has a noble site and may 
well become a great city. 

Here passed the boats that bore the first settlers to 
Robertson's colony on the Cumberland. There are no 
Indians now to shoot from the banks, and you will see 
on the river only rafts of logs floating down from the 
forests in the mountains. 

Atlanta also is often called the '' Gate City " of the 
South. It stands more than a thousand feet above the sea, 
in northern Georgia, where the Appalachian mountain 




u 

o 
Pi 



X 
h 

O 

c 

5 

o 
o 

<r 

o 

5 



u 

d 



175 



176 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 

range is tapering down toward the southern plains. 
Because Atlanta is so high it is cooler in summer than 
most southern cities, and is alw^ays free from the scourge 
of yellow fever and cholera. 

It is a natural site for a city, for here at the end of the 
great mountain system the long lines of railway that 
follow the Atlantic coast swing around to the west, 
passing on to the Mississippi and down to Mobile and 
the ports on the gulf of Mexico. Other railways reach 
Atlanta from Chattanooga and Knoxville in the Great 
Valley, and still others lead the w^ay to Savannah and 
the Atlantic coast. Thus twelve lines of railway reach 
out from Atlanta like the spokes of a wheel and connect 
the city with all parts of the South. Let us take a map 
of the United States and draw a line through Richmond, 
Louisville, Nashville, and New Orleans. Notice how 
many states lie southeast of this line, and remember 
that of all the towns which they contain Atlanta is 
the largest and most important. Indeed, in trade and 
influence it surpasses many northern cities which are 
much larger. 

Atlanta saw stirring times in the Civil War. It was 
small then, having but about ten thousand people. In 
1864 most of it was burned to the ground, and we may 
truly say that it has grown to its present size in the short 
period since that time. To-day its population numbers 
more than one hundred thousand. During the recent 
Spanish War the Department of the Gulf made its head- 
quarters here, so that Atlanta appears to be sought 
both in war and in peace. The city was used as the 
capital of Georgia soon after the Civil War, and in 1877 




Fig. 71. Atlanta: Broad Street, looking North 



^n 



1/8 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



the people of the state voted that it should always be 
the seat of government. Since that time they have 
erected a capitol costing a miUion dollars, adorning the 
interior with marbles from their own quarries. 

A few years ago an exposition was held at Atlanta to 
show the world the achievements and hopes of the great 
South. Everybody knew that the South raised cotton, 
but Atlanta wished to prove that the South could also 




Fig. 72. FuLTox Bag and Cotton Mills, Atlanta 

spin and weave her famous product. Mr. W. G. Atkin- 
son was the governor of Georgia at that time. During 
the exposition a day was chosen in which something 
unusual should be done. Men went out into a field in 
the morning and picked some cotton. It was ginned 
and spun and woven in double-quick time. Then tailors 
took some of the cloth, cut it, fitted it, and sewed it 
into a suit of clothes. Governor Atkinson put on the 
suit and visited the grounds of the exposition. In the 
morning the cotton was in the field, in the evening 



CITIES OF THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 



179 



it was on the governor. 
Suits are not made so 
quickly as that on ordi- 
nary days, but the South 
spins and weaves millions 
of dollars' worth of cotton, 
turning the mill wheels 
with southern coal or 
with the waters of swift 
southern streams. 

Atlanta is not only at 
the southern end of the 
mountains, but it is on the 
divide which separates the 
streams of the gulf from 
those of the Atlantic. On 
the one hand, not far away, 
is the Ocmulgee, flowing 
to the ocean, while west- 
ward, and distant but a 
few miles, the Chatta- 
hoochee flows toward the 
gulf. The latter river has 
been harnessed by man, 
and eleven thousand horse 
power measures the 
amount of energy that 
can be carried over the 
wires to Atlanta to move 
its cars and turn the 
wheels of its factories. 




I So 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



The mills not only spin the cotton of the gulf plains but 
also turn out fertilizers, work up the timber of the region, 
and make a multitude of other things to swell the city's 
trade with her neighbors. 

Appropriate to her needs, Atlanta has had since 1887 
a school of technology, in which she teaches her sons 




Fig. 74. Iron Furnace, Birmingham 



how to develop the great resources of the South. Here 
are shops and departments of engineering, and, not 
least, instruction in making textiles, so that the cotton 
of southern fields need no longer go to Massachusetts 
or to England to be spun and woven. 

The youngest great town of the southern mountain 
region was started on an old cotton plantation in 1871, 



CITIES OF THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS iSl 

thirty-four years before the writin<,^ of these lines. The 
people knew that in Alabama as well as in Tennessee 
coal and iron are found close together. So men built an 
iron town and called it, after one of the greatest furnace 
towns in the world, Birmingham. It is a noisy, busy 
place, with wide streets, swift electric cars, and blazing 
furnaces. To see it grow is like watching a new Pitts- 
burg rise up in the heart of the South. 

From the Berkshire country at the north to the 
southern end of the Appalachians, there are to-day thriv- 
ing towns and fertile fields. No longer does the mountain 
wall cut off the products of the West from the markets 
of the East. Yet hardly a hundred years ago the eastern 
strip of country was practically shut off from the whole 
territory drained by the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. 
Indian trails and rough roads were the only means of 
communication between the two sections. Great as are 
the natural resources of both regions, their prosperity 
has been bound up in the development of roads and 
railways, and is due in large measure to the energy, 
foresight, and self-sacrifice of those who crossed the 
barrier and made it easy for others to follow them. 



INDEX 



Adams, Charles Francis, cited, 7 
Adams, John Quincy, 100 
Adirondacks, 32 
Albany, N.Y., 6, 10, 15, 16 
Alexander, Mt., 130 
Alexandria, Va., 41, 86 
Allegheny Front, 74, 78, 80, 82 
Allegheny Portage Railway, 75, 76, 

80 
Allegheny river, 1 1 1 
Allentown, Pa., 79 
Altoona, Pa.. 77 ; description of, 

81 
Amsterdam, N.Y., 20 
Ann, Fort, 32 
Annapolis, Md., 88 
Antietam, 132 

Appalachians, southern, 174 
'•Arks" on the Susquehanna, 41 
Arnold, Benedict, 37 
Atkinson, Gov. W. G., 178 
Atlanta, Ga., 174-180 
Auburn, N.Y., 57 

Bald Eagle valley, 80 

Baltimore, Md., 53, 86, loi ; growth 

of, 107 
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 99, 

loi, 102, no 
Barges on the Ohio, 116, 118 
Barton, Clara, cited, 82 
Bay Road, Mass., 4 
Bedford, Pa., 71, 77 
Bemis Heights, 38 
Bennington, Vt., 38 
Berkshires, 5 ; railw^ay through, 9, 

10 
Bethlehem, Pa., 79 
Binghamton, N.Y., 52 
Birmingham, Ala., 181 
Black Rock (Buffalo), 47 



" Blackbeard," 130 

Blockhouse at Pittsburg, 112 

Blount College, 170 

Blue Grass country, 127, 151, 166 

Blue mountain, 79 

Blue Ridge mountains, 88, 130 

Boone, Uaniel, early life, 144 
training, 145 ; portrait, 145 
moves to North Carolina, 146 
serves with Braddock, 146 
camps in Kentucky, 147 ; visits 
Cumberland Gap, 148; founds 
Boonesborough 148 ; buys lands 
of the Indians, 149; marks out 
the Wilderness road, 149 

Boonesborough, 148 

Boston, Mass., i, 2, 7, 12 

Braddock, General, 69, 90, 91, 146 

Braddock, Pa., 83 

Brant, Joseph, ^^ 

Bristol, Tenn., 134 

British, in New York, 32 ; in the 
Ohio country, 156 

Brownsville, Pa., 93, 117 

Buffalo, 52, 57, 60, no; growth 
of, 61 

Burgoyne, General, 32, 37 

Burnside, General, 168 

Business, increase of, 114, 118 

Cambria Steel Company, S;^ 

Cameron hill, 173 

Campbell, William and Arthur, 160 

Canajoharie, N.Y., 24 

Canals, 44; Erie, 7, 46, 48, 50-52; 
Pennsylvania, 74 ; Chesapeake 
and Ohio, 98-101, 107 ; Dela- 
ware and Hudson, 53 ; at Louis- 
ville, Ky., 127 

Carlisle, Pa., 71, 79, 132 

Carroll, Charles, loi 



18- 



i84 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



Carry to Schenectady, the, 19, 22 

Catc/i-me-tf-you-can, 2 

Catskill mountains, 15, 32 

Chambersburg, Pa., 71, 132 

Champlain, lake, 31, 37 

Charlottesville, Va., 142 

Chattahoochee river, 179 

Chattanooga, Tenn., 135 ; descrip- 
tion of, 173-175 

Cherokee Indians, 139, 149 

Chesapeake bay, 86 

Chesapeake and Ohio canal, 107; 
building of, 98-101 

Chicago, 1 10 

Chickamauga, 174 

Chissel, Fort, 135 

Cincinnati, Ohio, description of, 
123-127 

Clark, George Rogers, raises an 
army, 156; portrait, 157; cap- 
tures Kaskaskia and Vincennes, 
158 

Clay, Henry, stories of, 96, 114 

Cleveland, Benjamin, 160 

Clinch river, 134 

Clinton, De Witt, 44, 49; stirs up 
legislature, 40 ; portrait, 43 ; 
train, 53, 54 

Coal, 104, 118, 122, 153, 170, 181 

Cohoes, N.Y., 22 

Coke ovens, 108 

Columbia , The, 2 

Columbia, Pa., 69, 74, 76 

Columbus, Ohio, 94 

Conemaugh river, 75, 82 

Conestoga creek, 67 

Conestoga Traction Company, 70 

Conestoga wagons, 77 

Connecticut river, 4 

Construction, early railway, 105 

Cooper, Peter, 106 

Cornstalk, 155 

Comwallis, Lord, 158 

Cotton, 178 

Cumberland, Fort, 89, 90; city of, 
93, 95, 102 

Cumberland Gap, 142, 148, 150, 
152 

Cumberland mountains, 134, 142 

Cumberland river, 164, 174 



Cumberland road, 93 
Cunard, Samuel, 2 
Cunard line, 2, 8 

Dams, use of, 119 

Danforth, Mr., and salt making, 27 

Deerfield valley, 8 

Delaware and Hudson Canal Com- 
pany, 53 

Delaware, Lackawanna and West- 
ern Railroad, 60 

De-o-wain-sta, 23 

Detroit, 41, 156 

Dickens, Charles, 126 

Dinwiddle, Governor, 89 

Doak, Rev. Samuel, 160 

Dongan, Gov. Thomas, 40 

Dunlap's creek, 96 

Dunmore, Lord, 155 

Duquesne, Fort, 91 

Dutch, in New York, 14, 18, 31 

Earle, Mrs. Alice Morse, cited, 55 

Easton, Pa., 79 

Edward, Fort, 31 

Emerson, Ralph W^aldo, cited, i 

Empire State Express, 56 

England, interest of, in fur trade, 

18 ; railways of, 55 
Erie canal, 7, 42, 46, 48, 50-52 
Erie, lake, 18, 42, 98 
Erie Railroad, 60 
Euphrates river, 130 

Fairfax, Lord William, 88 

Falls of the Ohio, 127, 146, 152 

Farms in Pennsylvania, 66 

" Feeders " of Erie canal, 52 

Ferguson, Patrick, 159 

Finley, John, 146, 148 

Fishing interests, 104 

Flag, perhaps the first American, 

34 
F'latboats, 1 17 
Floyd, Gen. William, 22 
Forbes's road, 71 
Forts: Orange, 17; Stanwix, 22, 

23' 34' 37' 6r, 149 ; Schuyler, 23 ; 

Johnson, 26; Edward, 31 ; Ann, 

32; Ticonderoga, 32, 37, 38; 



INDEX 



1S5 



Cumberland, 89, 90; Duquesne, 
91 ; Chissel, 135; Sanders, 16S 
Franklin, Benjamin, 4, 69, 130 
" Franklin," state of, 166 
Frederick, Md., 93 
French, in Ohio country, 89 
French and Indian War, 69 
French Broad river, 135, 159, 170 
Frostburg, Md., 90, 93 
Fur trade, 18, 24, 40 
Furnaces near I'ittsburg, 121 

Gansevoort, Col. Peter, 34. 

Gas, natural, 120 

"Gate City," the, 174 

Genesee road, 24, 25 

Genesee street, Utica, 23 

Geneva, 24, 25 

George, Mt., 130 

Georgetown, D.C., 100 

Georgia Institute of Technology, 

179 
Germans in Pennsylvania, 66 ; in 

Tennessee, 136 
Ginseng, 24 
Gist, Christopher, 89 
Glass mills, 122 
Gray, Captain, 2 
Great Kanawha river, 155 
Great Smoky mountains, 134, 170 
Great Valley, the, 71, 130, 132, 

134. 136. 139- 
Gulliver'' s Travels^ 150 

Gypsum, 104 

Hagerstown, Md., 25, 132, 165 
Half Moon, the, 15 
Halifax, 2 

Hambright's Hotel, 70 
Hamburg-American line, 108 
Hamilton, Col. Henry, 156 
Hancock, Gov. John, 2 
Hanks, Abraham, 149 
Harlem, 14 

Harpers Ferry, 107, 130, 132 
Harriman, Tenn., 170 
Harrisburg, Pa., 74, 85, 132; 

description of, 78 
Henr\', Patrick, 1^6 
Herkimer, Nicholas, 29, ^t^, 35, 36 



I lessians, 33, 38 
Hill, (ien. A. P., 142 
//// or Miss, the, 77 
Hiwassee river, 135 
Ilollidaysburg, Pa., 74 
Holston river, 134 
Ilonesdale, I'a., 53 
Hoosac mountain, 5, 8 
Hoosac tunnel, 9-1 1 
Hoosick river, 5 
Housatonic river, 5 
Howe, General, 32 
Hudson, Henry, 15, 16 
Hudson river, i 5 
Huguenots, 136 
Hulbert, cited, 105 

Illinois, 158 

Indiana, i 58 

Indians, 144, 149, 163, 164; in 
New York, 14, 17, iS, 33; at 
Watauga, 138; at Point Pleas- 
ant, 155 

Indies, hope of reaching, 15 

Iron works, 121, 129, 170, 180 

Iroquois Indians, 18 

Jackson, "Stonewall," 133 
James river, 133 ; gap. 134 
Jefferson, Thomas, i 56 
Johns Hopkins University, 108 
Johnson, Fort, 26 
Johnson, John, 36 
Johnson, Sir William, 20 
Johnstown, N.Y., 20 
Johnstown, Pa., 75, 76, 82 
Joppa, 92 
Juniata river, 74 

Kaskaskia, 111., 116, 157 
Kentucky, 127, 154, 164; becomes 

a state, 165 
Kings Mountain, 15S, 160 
Knights, Sarah, 4 
Knox, Gen. Henry, 170 
Knoxville, 134, 166, 170 

Lake Shore Railroad, no 
Lancaster, Pa., 65, 72, 78 
Lancaster pike, 65, 67, 70 



1 86 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



Lee, Arthur, 113 

Lee, Richard Henry, 98 

Lee, Gen. Robert E., 132 

Legislators allowed boat hire, 87 

Lewis, Andrew, 155 

Licking river, 124 

Limestones, 104, 132, 151, 169 

Lincoln, Abraham, 117, 149 

Little Falls, NA'., 22, 42 

Little Tennessee river, 135 

Liverpool, 1 10 

Locks, 45 

Logan, 155 

London, 1 10 

Long House, the, 18 

Longstreet, General, 168 

Lookout Mountain, 173 

Losantiville, 124 

Louisville, 117, 127 

Lulbegrud creek, 151 

Luray, 131, 132 

Lyell, Sir Charles, cited, 126 

McClellan, General, 132 

Mail, first, received at Utica, 24 

Mail bags, race of the, 109 

Mail coaches, 94 

Manhattan island, 14, 15 

Marble, 104, 168, 171 

Maryland, 86 

Memphis, 172 

Middlesboro, 153 

Milestone on Braddock's road, 

90 
Missionary Ridge, 173 
Mobile, 174 

Mohawk valley, 16-19, 31, 42, 59 
Monongahela river, 93, 96, 1 1 1 
Morris, Gouverneur, 42 
Mount Vernon, 41, 86 

Nash, Oliver, 163 

Nashborough (Nashville), 163, 171, 

173 
National Road, the, 91, 93, 96, 

123 

New Amsterdam, 14 

New Jersey, Scotch-Irish in, 66 

New Netherlands, 14 

New river (Great Kanawha), 134 



New York Central Railway, 20, 

30, 58, 60, 62 
New York City, 2, 7, 14 
New York state, 27 ; well adapted 

for canal, 44 
Newburg, NA\, 60 
A\ki//'s Ark, 49 
Nolichucky river, 159 
Norfolk and Western Railway, 

133 
North Adams, Mass., 5 
A^orth American Review, 102 
North Carolina, 137, 146 
North-German Lloyd line, 108 

Ocmulgee river, 179 

Ogden, Utah, 109 

Ohio Company, 88 

Ohio country, French in, 89 

Ohio river, 76, 98, 1 11, 123, 127, 

Oil City, 120 
Omaha, 109 
Oneida Indians, 17 
Oneida Carrying Place, 22 
Onondaga salt, 27, 113 
Ontario, lake, 18, 22, '^'^ 
Oriskany, 29, 30, 35 
O.swego, 32 
Oswego river, 22 
Otsego lake, 98 
Oyster industry', 104 

" Packers," 72 

Packets, 50 

Parton, James, cited, 120 

Penn, William, 66 

Pennsylvania, settlement of, 66 

Pennsylvania Railroad, 77-85 

" Pennsylvania Dutch," 66 

Pennsylvania canal, 74 

Phelps, Abner, 9 

Philadelphia, 41, 63 

Pike, Pittsburg, 72; Frederick, 93 

Pineville gap, 143, 147 

Pittsburg, 64, 71, 75, 83, 107, 156; 

description of, 1 11, 115, 120, 

122 ; pike, 72 
Pittsfield, Mass., 5 
Point Pleasant, 155 



I 



INDEX 



187 



Portage Railway, Allegheny, 75, 

76, 80 
Post, John, 23, 24 
Potomac Company, 99 
Potomac river, 86, 106 
Powell, Ambrose, 142 
Powell's river, 134, 142 
Prairies in Kentucky, 152 
P'rinceton College, 66 
Providence, R.I., 4 
Puncheon floors, 140 

Queen City, the, 124 
Queenstown, 1 10 
Quincy, Mass., 53 

Railways : through the Berkshires, 
9, 10; from Albany to Schenec- 
tady, 9, 53 ; early, 53, 56 ; oppo- 
sition to, 55 ; growth of, 60, 109, 
181 ; West Shore, 59; Erie, 60; 
New York Central, 20, 30, 58, 
60, 62 ; Wabash, 102 ; Baltimore 
and Ohio, 99, lOi, 102, no; 
Southern Pacific, 109 ; Union 
Pacific, 109; Lake Shore, no; 
Norfolk and Western, 133; 
Southern, 134, 170 

Reading, Pa., 79 

Red Star Une, 108 

Redstone, 117 

Richardson, Judge John, 46 

Rivers important in a country's 
growth, 5-7, 16, 17, 24, 26, 31, 
41, 122, 126, 133 

Roads, in New England, 4, 6, 7 ; 
stage, 64; development of, 72; 
indifference to, 87 ; national in- 
terest in, 92 ; Braddock's, 90 ; 
Cumberland, 93 ; Frederick, 93 ; 
National, 91,93,96; Wilderness 
(Boone's trail, Kentucky road, 
Virginia road, Caintuck Hog 
road), 127, 149 

Roanoke, 134 

Robertson, James, goes to W^a- 
tauga, 137 ; pacifies the Indians, 
139; helps protect the new 
settlement, 155; founds Nash- 
borough, 163; trusted by the 



people, 164; portrait, 164; abil- 
ity, 172 

Rochester, N.Y., 25, 52 

Rochester, Colonel, 26, 41,61, 132 

" Rolling roads," 88 

Rome, 22, 46, 61 

Roosevelt, Theodore, cited, 137, 
140, 160 

Ross's Landing, 174 

Sails on cars, 105 

St. Clair, General, 124 

St. Leger, General, 23^ 61 

Salt, 27, 61, n3 

Samp mortars, 21 

San Francisco, 109 

Saratoga, 38 

Schenectady, 19, 42, 47, 61 

" Schonowe," 19 

Schuyler, Fort (Utica), 23 

Schuyler, Han Yost, 37 

Schuylerville, 38 

Scotch-Irish, 66, 136 

Seneca river, 24 

Seneca lake, 25 

Settlement : in New England, 4 ; 
in New York, 14, 24; in Penn- 
sylvania, 66 ; in the Ohio coun- 
try, 117; in Tennessee, 135, 
170; in Kentucky, 148 

Sevier, John, goes to Watauga, 
138 ; fights on the frontier, 155; 
plans to attack Ferguson, 160; 
returns home, 162 ; portrait, 
162; monument to, 165; other 
honors, 166; on the Tennessee 
river, 172 

Shelby, Isaac, 155, 159, 165 

Shelbyville, 165 

Shenandoah valley, 88, 107, 130, 
132 

Sheridan, 133 

Shippensburg, Pa., 71 

Shreve, Captain, 117 

Slate, T04 

" Smoky City, The," 120 

South Mountain, Pa., 132 

Southern Pacific Railway, 22 

Southern Railway, 134, 170, 

Speed of early trains, 105 



18S 



FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY 



Spotswood, Alexander, 129 
Springfield, Mass., 6, 10 
Stanwix, Fort, 22, 23, 34^ 37, 61 » 

149 
Stark, General, 38 
Staunton, Va., 135 
Steamboats, 1 18 
Stephenson, George, 53 
Stillwater, 38 
Susquehanna valley, 26, 41, 46, 

104 
Swift Run Gap, 130 
Sycamore Shoals, 160 
Sydney, Australia, 109 
Syracuse, 27, 52, 57, 61 

Tarleton, Colonel, 159 
Teamsters of early days, 64, 69 
Tennessee, 134, 154, 164, 172; 

University of, 170 
Tennessee river, 134, 142, 163, 167, 

172,174 
Ticonderoga, 32, t,^, 38 
Tidewater country, 87, 130 
Timber, 104, 180 
Toll houses, 68, 87 
Toll rates, 94 
Tom Thumb, 106 
Trails, old, 4, 6, 17, 19, 22, 25, 28, 

72 
Tramways in England, 54 
Transylvania Company, 148 
Travel, early, 5, 22, 56, 64, 91 
Trow Plat, 23 
Trunk line, 57 

" Tubal Cain of Virginia," 129 
Tudor, Frederick, 4 
Twentieth Century Limited, 56 

Union Pacific Railroad, 109 
University of Tennessee, 170 
Utica, 21, 23, y], 57, 61 



Valley of east Tennessee, 135; of 

Virginia, 132 
Valley, the Great, 71, 130, 132, 

134, 136, 139 
Valleys as natural roads, 5-7, 16, 

17, 22, 24, 26, 31, 41, 126, 133, 

142, 152, 156 
Van Curler, Arent, 17, 19, 57, 61 
Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 58 
l^enttira, the, 109 
Vincennes, Ind., 158 
Virginia, 129, 154; valley of, 132 

Wabash Railway Company, 102 
Wabash river, 158 
Walker, Dr. Thomas, [42 
Ward, Nancy, 139 
Washington, D.C., 91, 93, 94 
Washington, George, 41, 60, 86, 

112, 133 ; part taken by, in road 

making, 88-92, 98 
Washington, Lawrence, 89 
Watauga Settlement, 135-141,144, 

146, 159 
Waterford, 47 
West, the, 40, 60 
Westfield valley, 6 
West Shore Railway, 59 
Wheeling, 94, 107, 122 
White, Hugh, 21 
Whitesboro, 21 
Wilderness Road, 127, 149 
Willett, Captain Marinus, 35 
William and Mary College, 142 
Wills creek, 89, 102 
Wills mountain, 93 
Winchester, Va., 132, 135 
Windmills, Dutch, 15 
Wood creek, 22, 42 

Yadkin valley, North Carolina, 146 



FEB 26 1907 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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